The APHN is the regional umbrella body for hospice palliative care in the Asia Pacific region. It started as a gathering of palliative care workers in the 1990s and evolved over a series of meetings from 1995 to 2001 when it became a registered entity in Singapore. Dr Rosalie Shaw was the Executive Director, with Professor Tetsuo Kashiwagi as the Inaugural Chairman, and Dr Shigeaki Hinohara as Patron.
The APHN started with 14 Founding Sectors. A sector is a geographic region which may include one or more countries, or part of a country. Sectors will be invited to join the APHN in the future as hospice services are established in other countries. The founding sectors were Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Over the years, many organisations from the region have joined this community and supported the work of APHN to reach out to more communities in need of palliative care and to build sustainable capabilities for service development, advocacy, education and research.
The APHN community includes national associations such as:
- the Singapore Hospice Council
- Malaysian Hospice Council
- Palliative Care Australia
- Hospice Palliative Care Japan
- Hospice New Zealand
- Thai Palliative Care Society
- The Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care (Hong Kong)
- Indonesian Palliative Society
- Hospice Philippines
- Hospice Foundation of Taiwan
- Korean Society for Hospice and Palliative Care; and
- Indian Association of Palliative Care.
The hospice palliative care service providers and individuals who joined the APHN also contributed significantly to grow APHN to a 1548 member strong network where it is today.
On the 15 October 2015, a resolution was passed by the 15th APHN Council to accept Mongolia as a new sector of the APHN. This is a milestone for us as Mongolia is the first sector to join the APHN since 2001.
Dr Cynthia Goh, APHN Chair, said: “We are delighted to announce that Mongolia has been appointed as the 15th sector of the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network! Please welcome this new addition to our Palliative Care community in the Asia Pacific!”
We will like to invite all who wish to post any well wishes and messages for Mongolia to do so by sending an email to aphn@aphn.org or directly through the APHN website www.aphn.org by 31 December 2015. If you have photos taken with our colleagues from Mongolia or in Mongolia, please send them to us too!
We will collate all the messages and put it up on the APHN website to close this wonderful year of 2015 with a bang! The collage of submissions will also be presented to the representative from Mongolia as a welcome gift during our next AGM in 2016.
We will be 15 years old in 2016 and we now have 15 chapters! A fitting present for our 15th birthday! We look forward receiving all the welcome messages on our website!
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