by ecancer reporter Audrey Nailor

Cancer is a growing challenge on the African continent, but palliative care remains a thorny problem.

Cultural traditions and modern healthcare enmesh in the new special issue published in ecancermedicalscience on palliative care in Africa.

Five hand-chosen original research articles from on-the-ground experts, and an editorial by Nobel Peace Prize nominee Professor Anne Merriman, highlight multiple angles of this complex topic.

“Palliative care is important because the pain in cancer is akin to torture,” says Professor Merriman, Founder of Hospice Africa Uganda and Guest Editor of this special issue.

“We have known how to control pain since 1967, yet less than 3% of people in Africa have their pain controlled.”

Contributors from Sudan, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda describe a hopeful continent in which older societal beliefs, family traditions, government policy and modern healthcare combine to meet the challenges of palliative care.

Many African nations share a strong cultural suspicion of opioid medications, including morphine. Healthcare professionals may be wary of prescribing painkillers, due to a common misapprehension that they will encourage patients to become addicted to drugs.

The contributors approach this, and other challenges, from a variety of perspectives.

“Palliative care in Sudan is a fairly new concept,” writes Dr Nhala Gafer of the Radiation and Isotope Center in Khartoum, Sudan, a corresponding author – but it’s one that she champions as its founder. “More than 15% of patients or families expressed spontaneous positive feedback” after experiencing her centre’s approach to palliative care.

Dr Fiona Rawlinson of the Princess of Wales Hospital, UK discussed the role of education in palliative care, citing e-learning as an excellent way to spread this information. Dr Rawlinson was a key collaborator in ecancer’s free online e-learning course on palliative care, specially designed by and for healthcare professionals in Africa.

Taken together, the papers represent a cross-section of palliative care efforts in Africa in the past twenty years – and a powerful vision for the movement’s future.

“I hope that this special issue will contribute to all our efforts in spreading the need for compassion in the field of palliative care,” writes Professor Merriman, “leading us to the simplest affordable solutions to stop the pain and suffering we witness daily in the developing world, and bringing peace to patients and families at this special time of life.”

Read ecancer's Special Issue on Palliative Care in Africa here.