About
Supporting Palliative Care for All in Uganda
Center for Hospice Care (CHC) and the Palliative Care Association of Uganda (PCAU)’s partnership is focused on supporting PCAU’s strategic objectives to increase access to culturally appropriate palliative care in Uganda. CHC’s supporting foundation, the Hospice Foundation (HF), helps gather financial support from donors and stakeholders as well as mobilizing resources that help PCAU achieve its mission.
History
In 2008, CHC applied to the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa (FHSSA), now Global Partners in Care, to be matched with a partner in a low-resource setting. While most American hospices were assigned to a specific African hospice program, CHC was partnered with the Palliative Care Association of Uganda (PCAU), the national association for palliative care providers throughout the country. In essence, CHC was partnered with the entire country of Uganda.
PCAU works within the national framework for palliative care set out in the National Health Sector Strategic Plan and is mandated with providing leadership and coordination to scale up palliative care education and services. PCAU does this in conjunction with the Uganda Ministry of Health, local partners, stakeholders and in partnership with regional and international development organizations.
CHC’s collaborations with PCAU are multi-faceted and include an employee giving program, the Uganda Impact Fund, which provides more than $8,000 in annual support. Other partnership initiatives include:
- palliative care education for nurses and clinical officers
- a country-wide mHealth initiative
- the Road to Hope, a program that provides comprehensive support for child caregivers
- yearly bi-directional staff exchange visits
- collaborations with universities to provide experiential and research internships
- documentary films about palliative care provision in low-resource settings and the plight of orphaned child caregivers
- advocacy for inclusion of palliative care in the country’s universal health coverage
The partnership’s quantifiable successes also include the meaningful relationships that have grown between members of both organizations and the growing awareness of the need for palliative care because of our documentary films and internship program. We can count the number of students who are receiving an education because of the Road to Hope program but have no way to capture the difference this will make in their lives. We just know that it exists.
To see a snapshot of our partnership at the 15-year mark, download a copy of our 15-Year Partnership Report.