Innovation and development for comprehensive health care at the VIII Latin American Congress for Palliative Care

The Congress is co-sponsored by the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC), the Mexican Foundation for Health (FUNSALUD) and the civil society organisation: ‘Tómatelo a Pecho’.

The presidents of the Congress are Dr Eduardo Garcia Yanneo, MD, president of the ALCP, member of the WHO Technical Advisory Group and Board Member of the Worldwide Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance; and Dr Felicia Knaul, PhD, professor of the Department of Health Sciences in the Miller School of Medicine at the University of Miami and Director of the Miami Institute for the Americas.

The theme of the congress is: ‘Palliative Care: Innovation and development for comprehensive health care’. The Congress aims to promote the development of palliative care in Mexico, Central and South America and the Caribbean.

ALCP congresses aim to promote the development of palliative care in the region, to enable sharing advances, work in progress and achievements of palliative care teams, as well as promoting access to cutting-edge trends in medicine and in other disciplines to meet the palliative care needs of patients and families.

In addition to Doctors Garcia and Knaul, other well-known international and regional palliative care experts will speak at the Congress, including Silvia Allende (National Cancer Institute, Mexico City, Mexico), Mercedes Bernada (Pediatric Department, Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay), Eduardo Bruera (MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA), Claudia Burla (President of the Palliative Care Committee, Brazilian Association of Geriatrics and Gerontology, Sao Paulo, Brazil), Carlos Centeno (Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain), Eric Krakauer (Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA), Argelia Lara Solares (Instituto Nacional de la Nutricion, Mexico City, Mexico) and Christina Puchalski (George Washington University, Washington, USA).

Deadline for submissions of proposals for workshops, parallel sessions and posters is October 30, 2015.

The Congress will be mostly conducted in Spanish with some Portuguese sessions and translation from plenaries in English. Further information is available on the ALCP Congress website.