Following last year’s event, which saw a unanimous acceptance of the resolution: ‘Strengthening of palliative care as a component of comprehensive care throughout the life course‘, the objectives for the WHPCA this year are:
- to encourage member states to act on the implementation of the 2014 WHA resolution, including encouraging contributions to WHO’s reserved fund for resolution implementation
- to provide support for continued inclusion of palliative care into plans for prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
- to provide support for continued inclusion of palliative care into the continuum of universal health coverage (UHC); and
- to provide support for increasing the focus on access to essential palliative medicines in the upcoming UNGASS on controlled substances in New York in 2016.
Side events and meetings
The International Children’s Palliative Care Network (ICPCN) will host a side event on children’s palliative care on Monday 25 May, focussing on: ‘Implementing WHA’s Resolution on Palliative Care: Ensuring Access for Children’.
Diederik Lohman, Senior Researcher at Human Rights Watch, will be meeting with Francophone member states to offer support in implementing the palliative care resolution in their countries.
Why is advocacy important?
The work by palliative care advocates at this global level helps to influence the context within which each hospice or palliative care service around the world operates.
Advocacy helps to make high level decision makers, such as Ministers of Health, aware of the importance of palliative care. This paves the way for national organisations, or individual hospices, to work with their government to improve access to hospice and palliative care in their country.
Follow @thewhpca on Twitter for coverage of palliative care advocacy activities and #WHA68 for tweets about the event in general.
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