World Hospice and Palliative Care Day Celebrated  
  
World Hospice and Palliative Care Day was celebrated on Saturday October 10 at the Black Lion Hospital under the annual theme “Discovering Your Voice.”  This event marks a unified day of action to celebrate and support hospice and palliative care around the world.  The event brought together health policy makers, palliative and hospice care providers, people living with life-limiting illnesses and their families, as well as various government and non-governmental agencies.  This day aims at sharing the stakeholders’ vision to increase the availability of hospice and palliative care throughout Ethiopia by creating opportunities to speak out, as well as to  raise awareness and understanding of the needs – medical, social, psychological, spiritual – of people living with a life-limiting illness and their families.

Through funding by U.S. Government’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and technical assistance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC-Ethiopia), Washington University’s International Training & Education Center on HIV (I-TECH), took the lead alongside Johns Hopkins University’s Technical Support for the Ethiopian HIV/AIDS Initiative (JHU-TSEHAI), the Ethiopian Ministry of Health and Federal HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office (FHAPCO) to introduce palliative care into the HIV/AIDS continuum of care at the national level.  

Effective HIV care and treatment programs require palliative care as part of the service package.  The emergence of Highly Active Antiretroviral (anti-HIV) Therapy (HAART) has shifted the course of HIV/AIDS to a chronic manageable disease, enabling people with HIV/AIDS to live longer.  This shift has also changed palliative care from hospice to a model that offers a wider range of care, treatments and preventive services provision throughout the course of illness.

In 2006, PEPFAR/CDC, through I-TECH Ethiopia and JHU-TSEHAI, introduced the palliative care approach at the national level.  I-TECH led the development of National Pain Management Guidelines and a Palliative Care training curriculum alongside various activities revolving around HIV prevention with positives. I-TCH and JHU-TSEHAI have also been conducting trainings for service providers on palliative care, nutrition and end of life care, as well as providing preventive packages for HIV-infected clients and their families.  Moreover, JHU-TSEHAI also works with spiritual leaders to address the spiritual components of end of life care and support, and supports the roll-out of pain management services for terminally ill patients including the establishment of a model pain training center at Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa.

Palliative Care improves quality of life for HIV-positive clients through health maintenance, adherence to medication, prevention of opportunistic infections, and slowing disease progression, thereby reducing the incidence of illness and death.  Moreover, palliative care helps patients lead an active and productive lifestyle.                                                           

PEPFAR will continue to expand the palliative care program, including implementing therapeutic feeding, and enrolling severely malnourished people living with HIV – including HIV-positive pregnant women and vulnerable children.  The PEPFAR Ethiopia Semi Annual report documents that, by the end of the first quarter of 2009, a total of 297,289 individuals have received HIV-related palliative care, including for TB/HIV.