‘Living & Dying in Pain, It Doesn’t Have to Happen’ – an awareness campaign
During the month of April, Hospis Malaysia launched Malaysia’s Palliative Care Awareness Month, and had their messages shown on LEDtronic’s Digital Billboards in Damansara Perdana and Jalan Munshi Abdullah. LEDtronics is proud to support and be a part of this campaign.
Initiated by Hospis Malaysia, the National Awareness Campaign themed ‘Living & Dying in Pain, It Doesn’t Have to Happen’ aims to place the importance of improving access to palliative care services on the national agenda so that unnecessary pain and suffering from a life-limiting illness can be significantly reduced and properly managed.
Around the world, 75% of people cannot access the controlled medicines they need to treat moderate to severe pain. This may result in people living and dying in treatable, but uncontrolled pain.
Severe pain is debilitating and affects every aspect of the life of the person experiencing it, as well as the lives of family members and carers. In 2013, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, presented a report to the UN on torture in health care. He identified denial of pain relief as being tantamount to torture.
For someone living with a life-limiting illness, unmanaged pain and other symptoms and unaddressed psychosocial and spiritual concerns add a huge burden to a patient’s quality of life. Palliative care is a medical specialty that offers the skills necessary to support the patient and their family with the aim of improving their quality of life despite a life-limiting illness (cancer, organ failure, AIDS, progressive neurological disorders). Research shows that good assessment and management of physical and emotional symptoms early in the patient’s illness can reduce the burden for both the patient and their families and forms the foundation of quality palliative care.
