African Ministers of Health have signed a declaration to promote the inclusion of palliative care into universal health care.
The declaration referred to as the ‘Kampala Declaration 2022’ was signed on Thursday during a meeting of health ministers at Mestil Hotel ahead of the 7th International African Palliative Care Conference.
The declaration asks African governments to include palliative care in pandemic response planning. It also calls upon all African governments to integrate and fund palliative care for both adults and children in all national response plans for infectious disease, outbreaks.
It also calls for the inclusion of palliative care standards for adults and children as part of national infectious disease response plans.
In addition, the declaration calls for the training and equipping of national emergency response teams in palliative care; and the revision of national infectious disease response plans and protocols to address all the needs of patients holistically.
Dr. Moses Muwanga, the Assistant Commissioner in charge of hospice and palliative care at the Ministry of Health says the declaration will ensure that many people in need of palliative care are able to access it during a pandemic.
According to Dr. Muwanga, the declaration will enable access to pain killers such as morphine to be easily accessible to all people in need.
Globally is it estimated that 40 million people annually need palliative care. However, with pandemics such as COVID-19 and Ebola, this number could increase. However due to poor funding, often people are unable to access such care.
Dr. Stephen Connor, the Executive Director of the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance says that COVID-19 highlighted the need for palliative care.
“The COVID-19 pandemic had a tremendous impact on palliative care worldwide. This part of medicine was pushed aside yet it has needed. Often we heard stories of health workers saying they were tired of looking after people who were dying. These people had no experience with looking after the critically ill. Many patients were left to die alone and painfully,’’ he said.
The declaration was signed by a number of countries African countries attending the conference which include; Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Namibia, Kenya, and Zambia.
While opening the conference, Margaret Muhanga, the Minister of state in charge of Primary health care reiterated the government’s commitment to providing quality palliative care.
“We are committed to providing palliative care alongside our primary health care services and to accomplish this, we have introduced a department at the ministry of health directly in charge of this area. We believe that by taking this step, we are on course to effectively plan for palliative care at a national level,” she said.
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