Rio Grande City Council gives the go-ahead for official Palliative Care Week

The City council approved a law´s project of councilman Julio Cesar to have an official Palliative Care Week to celebrate palliative care in October.

The main idea is to share with the community the idea and concepts of palliative care and try to use this period to improve the discussion about the subject, discussing policies and increasing the access.

Palliative Care was included in the Municipal Health´s plan 2018-2021. It is one of the first municipal health plans considering the palliative care as public health objective in the whole country.

The first step of the palliative care plan is to improve the skills of primary care physicians and nurses as part of the Family Health Strategy (the main national program of Primary Care) and, through that, starting to improve the identification and following of these group of patients in territories covered by that programme.

The Support teams – composed of psychologists, nutritionists, physiotherapists, social workers, physical educators and community health workers – will be part of the discussion as well.

In parallel, discussion will be held on improving better access to opioid medications for pain relief, and other resources.

The Project “Estar ao Seu Lado- Cuidados Paliativos na Atenção Primária” is a main vector of these achievements. Since its foundation in 2014, it started and improved the discussion about the need to offer palliative care in primary care (locally and nationally) using the existent resources and programs from the Government besides to work with the Community to build a Compassionate Community. The improve of awareness of the society about palliative care is a main objective of the Project.

The Project Estar ao Seu Lado – Cuidados Paliativos would like to thank the councilman Julio Cesar, the Coordination of Family Health Strategy- André Azevedo and his team and the Municipal Health´s Secretary – Maicon Santos and his team for their partnership and their actions concerning to reduce the suffering and improving the quality of end of life from these people and their families.

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