Communal lifestyle healthy, UCH, CPCN tell Oyo communities

Center for Palliative Care Nigeria (CPCN), a non-profit organisation in Ibadan, and the palliative care unit of University College Hospital (UCH), has organised sensitisation programmes across councils in Oyo State.

The duo, in commemoration of this year’s World Hospice Day tagged “Compassionate Communities: Public Health Approach,” took to communities to denounce the practice of individualism created by urbanisation in communities and urged residents to return to a compassionate lifestyle, where people care for one another.

According to the professionals in palliative care, compassionate communities will help to provide relief for problems associated with serious illnesses, thus making quality of life better for patients and their families.

For families with patients diagnosed with life limiting diseases, the professionals affirmed that loving communities would reduce suffering, enable accessibility to quality healthcare and promote resilience in patients.

The Head of Department, Hospice and Palliative Care UCH, Dr. Yetunde Oloyede, said the sensitisation programmes aim at increasing public awareness, penetrating communities and changing their perception about what palliative care in medicine entails.

She lamented that many communities cannot identify patients that need palliative care and those who do, often take the wrong route in addressing the challenge.

Guest Speaker in one of the sensitisation programmes, Prof. Ike Akayi, described palliative care as an inter-sectoral approach in offering comprehensive comfort care to patients of all ages and their families throughout the course of serious illness.

She urged members of the communities to be involved in one another’s lives, serve as volunteers, who would be trained in providing home-based care, counseling, social and spiritual support services.

The CPCN, which has Prof. Olaitan Soyanwo as President, was established in 2005 and has worked actively in collaboration with the Federal Government and NAFDAC.