Dr Emmanuel Luyirika, Executive Director, African Palliative Care Association

Dr Emmanuel Luyirika has been the Executive Director of the African Palliative Care Association (APCA) since August 2012. In this role he has contributed to APCA’s work in several countries, especially in relation to palliative care policy development, technical assistance on palliative care programme development, training and research. He is a board member of the World Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA), Co-Chair of the WHO Technical Ad-hoc Committee on Palliative Care, a commissioner on the Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Control, Vice-Chair of the Council of the Institute of Hospice and Palliative Care in Africa, and a member of the indicator working group of the Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group of UNAIDS. He is also executive president of the board of CoRSU Hospital, a charitable rehabilitation and plastic surgery service for children and adults with disability arising from orthopaedic, plastic, malignancy and other acquired or congenital causes.
Before leading APCA Dr Luyirika was the Director of Mildmay International in Uganda for nine years, where his work involved the integration of cancer prevention, screening and management into an HIV programme. He also worked for the Department of Health in Limpopo Province in South Africa, where he lectured in family medicine at the Medical University of Southern Africa (MEDUNSA). He himself studied medicine at Makerere University, Uganda, family medicine at MEDUNSA, and public policy and management at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Dr Luyirika has published on HIV and palliative care and has served on several research monitoring boards and steering committees in relation to HIV and palliative care in Africa