The World Health Organization is the world’s governing body for health care with it HQ in Geneva and the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly (WHA) In May each year. In the prior January, the Executive Board of the World Health Assembly meets to work on the agenda for the WHA, discussing and proposing resolutions.
This year is significant in that for the first time, the WHA will have a Palliative Care resolution on the agenda! Yes palliative care has been discussed as components of other resolutions, particularly the recent focus on Non Communicable Diseases. But this year Palliative Care will be have a resolution of its own. A number of member states (countries) have been working on this and that should be able to be shared during the work together with the supportive countries.
As part of the preparation, the WHO Secretariat has released a report on Palliative Care to aid the Executive Board membership in their discussions. This is available at http://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/EB134/B134_28-en.pdf. Invite you to read and to share this report through your normal channels especially social media.
One will be able to follow the palliative care discussions this week on Twitter under the hashtags #hpmglobal and #EB134. The report will be the topic of discussion of the #hpmglobal chat on Monday January 20th 12 n GMT (11p Sydney; 530p Delhi; 3p Kenya, 12n London; and 7 am New York City). Hope you can join!
jfc