In a historic move, the Council of the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN) has voted unanimously to accept Mongolia as its 15th Sector.
The Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network is the regional umbrella body for hospice palliative care in the Asia-Pacific region. It started from a gathering of palliative care workers in the 1990s and evolved over a series of meetings from 1995 till 2001 when it became a registered entity in Singapore, with Dr Rosalie Shaw as the Executive Director, Professor Tetsuo Kashiwagi as the Inaugural Chairman, and Dr Shigeaki Hinohara as our Patron.
When it was incepted, the APHN started with 14 Founding Sectors. A Sector is a geographic region which may include one or more countries, or part of a country. Sectors will be invited to join the APHN in the future as hospice services are established in other countries. The founding sectors were Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam.
Over the years, many from the region has joined this community and supported this work to reach out to more communities in need of palliative care and to build sustainable capabilities for service development, advocacy, education and research. The APHN community includes national associations like the Singapore Hospice Council, Malaysian Hospice Council, Palliative Care Australia, Hospice Palliative Care Japan, Hospice New Zealand, Thai Palliative Care Society, The Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care (Hong Kong), Indonesian Palliative Society, Hospice Philippines, Hospice Foundation of Taiwan, Korean Society for Hospice and Palliative Care, Indian Association of Palliative Care, among many more others. The hospice palliative care service providers and individuals who joined the APHN also contributed significantly to grow APHN to a 1548 member strong network where it is today.
On the 15th October 2015, a resolution was passed by the 15th APHN Council to accept Mongolia as a new Sector of the APHN. This is a new milestone for us as Mongolia is the first Sector to join the APHN since 2001.
Says APHN Chair, Dr Cynthia Goh: “We are delighted to announce that Mongolia is now the 15th Sector of the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network! Please welcome this new addition to our Palliative Care community in the Asia Pacific!”
We will like to invite all who wish to post any well wishes and messages for Mongolia to do so by sending an email to aphn@aphn.org or directly through the APHN message board by 31 December 2015. If you have photos taken with our colleagues from Mongolia or in Mongolia, please send them to us too!
We will collate all the messages and put it up on the APHN website to close this wonderful year of 2015 with a bang! The collage of submissions will also be presented to the representative from Mongolia as a welcome gift during our next AGM in 2016.
We will be 15 years old in 2016 and we now have 15 chapters! What a coincidence! A present for our 15th birthday! Look forward receiving all the welcome messages!