Africa Health Magazine Report
Africa Health magazine has published a Special Report exclusively examining palliative care in Africa. Topics include: an overview of palliative care on the continent, palliative care and HIV, the impact of non-communicable disease incidence on health resources, pain and symptom management, palliative care for children, and hospital-based palliative care.
This Special Report, prepared by the Africa Palliative Care Association and financially supported by The Palliative Care Initiative of the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, is available at www.africa-health.com.
Reproduction of any section of the report needs to acknowledge Africa Health magazine as the primary publisher.
In sub-Saharan Africa, with an overwhelming communicable and non-communicable disease burden, the palliative care needs of aged people have never been more urgent. However, services that target this group often lack the necessary skills to provide effective palliative care.
This qualitative study aimed to: (i) describe the current life experiences of, and care services for, aged people and identify their unmet palliative care needs; (ii) provide recommendations for the integration of palliative care into existing services for the aged, and; (iii) highlight the key components of a rovisional palliative care research agenda for older people in Africa.
This manual advances that mentorship agenda across the African continent. Directed towards the mentorship of professionals, organisations and associations involved in the field of palliative care, it focuses on the areas of: organisational development; standards of care; advocacy and policy influencing; education and training; fund raising and donor relations; and monitoring and evaluation (M&E).
The need for the latter in an era of increasingly demanding international donor expectations regarding financial integrity, budgetary transparency and the proven impact value of funded work programmes, as well as the complexity of the concepts entailed, is reflected in the disproportionate length of the M&E chapter. For many emerging organisations, the very notion of being measured and assessed is, in itself, threatening.
Pain is a significant and distressing problem experienced by people living with HIV/AIDS. In order to adhere to the World Health Organisation's (WHO) pain ladder, it is essential that HIV care providers can access opioid analgesia for their patients.
Although palliative care is defined by its multidimensional focus on physical, emotional and spiritual pain, the lack of access to opioids in Sub-Saharan Africa has been identified as a major challenge. This study aimed to identify current opioid prescribing services and regulatory bodies within 12 PEPFAR countries, and to describe barriers to, and potential for, expansion in the number of opioid providers, for people with HIV/AIDS.
Twenty mechanisms for addressing torture in health care
This manual describes 20 anti-torture mechanisms from the United Nations (UN) and from African, European, and Inter-American human rights systems and provides illustrative examples to explain how to use these mechanisms to fight torture in health settings.
It provides a brief introduction to each system and examines the treaty-based and charter-based organs that address torture in each system. A set of questions accompanies each mechanism, exploring its mandate, procedure, possibilities for engagement, and prior work on torture in health care. The manual also includes a glossary of basic human rights terms.
