Relieving the pain of a patient with an incurable disease – the palliative care – can help such patients die peacefully, and speakers at a seminar yesterday stressed the need for mass awareness and cooperation in this regard.
The seminar titled “Significance of Palliative Care in Bangladesh,” organised by Centre for Palliative Care, was held yesterday at the capital’s Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University’s (BSMMU) Shahid Milton Hall.
Professor and in-charge of Centre for Palliative Care Dr Nezamuddin Ahmad said: “Relatively a novel concept in the country, Palliative care is an approach that improves the life of patients and their families facing life-threatening illnesses through prevention and relief measures by means of early identification and treatment of pain and other problems.”
He said: “Mostly the incurable patients face four kinds of problems which are physical, financial, psychological and spiritual.
“About 35 million patients out of 55 million people who die every year in the world need urgent palliative care. Seven million of them died from cancer only in 2007 and 70% of them had to endure a period of extreme mental and physical pain before death. But we could have ensured a painless demise for them, providing a little bit of trained care and help like easing an asthma problem or cleaning up a wound.
“Our Centre for Palliative Care at BSMMU has been providing palliative care for those incurable patients on a regular basis since 2011…World Health Organisation (WHO) also asked for its member countries to endorse palliative care into their national health policy.”
He also mentioned that there are about 6 lakh possible incurable patients in the country at present. In 2014 they treated 1,344 patients with only 19 beds.
“We are also facing problems regarding the treatment as we face obstacles in getting morphine. It is a life saving medicine for cancer patients in alleviating their severe physical pain. There are many bureaucratic and legal problems in buying morphine in our country,” he pointed out.
“It is incorrect to say, there is nothing else we can do. It is a skeptic notion and we must get rid of it. We can always do something and we must do our best till the end to ease the pain of an incurable patient. This summarises the attitude of palliative care,” he said.
BSMMU Vice-Chancellor Professor Pran Gopal Datta said: “This is not only for the incurable patients. It is high time that we need to think of ourselves and of our nearest and dearest ones. Such palliative care would be necessary for us too one day. We hope we can increase the number of beds to 100 soon with special consideration for child patients as the number of child cancer patients is increasing day by day.”
Members of Society of Musical Bands in Bangladesh (SMB) composed a theme song titled “Bondhu Tomar Haat ta Barao” highlighting the significance of palliative care.
Several cultural personalities, including Ilias Kanchon, Fahmida Nabi, Sharmin Lucky, Bappa Mazumder, Momotaz Begom, Abdun Noor Tushar, were present at the programme and showed solidarity.
