UCT prioritises end-of-life care with novel project
As the need for palliative care increases in South Africa, a novel, community-focused initiative is set to completely transform how healthcare workers approach and handle patients and their families in need of critical end-of-life care and support.
Piloted at a primary healthcare facility in Heideveld, by family physician Dr Jennie Morgan, who is based in the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Department of Family, Community and Emergency Care, the initiative draws on global best practices informed by community-based palliative care models implemented in India and other parts of the world.
The project is funded by VLIR-UOS – a leading funding body for scholarships for and partnerships between academics from Flanders in Belgium and partner institutions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, all of whom focus on global sustainable development. The five-year study responds to the growing need for palliative care in South Africa by developing Compassionate Communities of Care. What’s unique is that it’s anchored in a collaborative, multistakeholder, multi-institutional approach led by UCT’s Chronic Diseases Initiative for Africa (CDIA), the Division of Interdisciplinary Palliative Care Medicine (IPCM) and the Cancer Research Initiative, in partnership with Ghent University and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, both located in Belgium.