The Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA) is delighted to announce the start of a new project and a partnership with The Centre for Palliative Care Bangladesh, part of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).
This pilot project will extend outreach palliative care services into two urban slums in Dhaka. It is expected that within the one year project, we will reach 100 older people and their families with palliative care services and provide an evaluated model of care for future work.
What are we going to do?
We will be taking a detailed look at the current situation in two urban slums, and the specific palliative care needs of older people and their carers in these communities.
This will enable us to plan and design the subsequent activities to effectively meet the need, in collaboration with the community directly.
The situation and needs analysis will provide the detail for the following framework of activities:
- Running sensitisation programmes in the slums, to increase understanding and awareness of the need for palliative care.
- Recruiting up to eight assistants from the slum community, and training them in palliative care. The assistants will be responsible for identifying people in need of palliative care and for providing basic palliative care in their homes.
- Linking Palliative Care Nurses from the Centre for Palliative Care with the Community assistants to guide and mentor their activities.
- Linking up with other community health workers, organisations and groups working in the slums to better meet the holistic needs identified.
- Providing palliative care outreach services to at least 100 older people and their families in their homes.
- The training – and subsequent delivery of palliative care – will be based on the Palliative Care Toolkit, a key resource for palliative care in resource poor settings.
Read more about the project here.