Armenia needs palliative care center –expert

YEREVAN, November 11. / ARKA /. The Palliative Care Center, an affiliation of Armenia’s National Cancer Centre, has launched a fund-raising campaign to collect at least $2 million to build a national palliative care center, head of the palliative care center Hrant Karapetyan told today at an international medical forum in Yerevan discussing palliative care challenges. 

Mr. Karapetyan told ARKA that the campaign launched on October 12, marked as the World Day of Hospice and Palliative Care, has raised so far only less than $1000.

The international conference in Armenia’s capital has been organized by the Open Society Foundation of Armenia. The participants of the two-day gathering are discussing  the legal aspects of  providing  palliative care in Armenia, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Albania and some other countries, and are looking also into  the best practices of  application of palliative care. The forum will also discuss ways to increase the level of awareness about this form of treatment.

Palliative care is specialized medical care for people with serious illnesses. It focuses on providing patients with relief from the symptoms, pain, and stresses of a serious illness—whatever the diagnosis. The goal is to improve quality of life for both the patient and the family. Palliative care treats people suffering from serious and chronic illnesses such as cancer, cardiac disease such as congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease , kidney failure, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and many more. 

Armenia has now four pilot palliative care centers, which can treat up to 15 people a month. Two of them are located in medical institutions of Yerevan and the other two are in Ararat and Lori regions. The Palliative Care Center of the National Cancer Centre is able to treat only 57 people in one year.

These centers were opened in March this year as part of palliative care concept developed in 2012. To date, a day’s palliative care in Armenia is worth 20 thousand drams (about $50).  According to Karapetyan, some 3,500 people in Armenia need palliative care daily.

Armenia’s parliamentary committee on health, maternity and childhood issues is elaborating a bill on narcotic, psychotropic and psychedelic drugs, which was approved in the first reading , which provides a clear description of the mechanisms  doctors should be guided by in prescribing  opioid analgesics. -0-