Nurses Paving the Way to Improving Palliative Care Services in the Middle East

Abstract

Copyright: © 2013 Silbermann M, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. In January 2012, the Ministers of health of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) met in Muscat, Oman to respond to the UN General Assembly Political Declaration on the Prevention and Control of NonCommunicable Diseases (NCDs) [1]. “The regional strategy details what the six (GCC) countries will be doing to tackle NCDs during the next years in terms of reducing people’s exposure to causative risk factors and improving services to prevent and treat these leading health problems”, said Dr. Ahmed Al-Saidi, Omani Minister of Health who chaired the meeting [2]. One month later, MECC together with the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) and the Omani National Association for Cancer Awareness (NACA) organized the first palliative care course for Omani nurses [3]. As a direct follow up to that course earlier in February this year, the Middle East Cancer Consortium (MECC) jointly with the Oman Cancer Association (OCA), the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) organized an advanced training course in palliative care for nurses which was followed by a research day on palliative care in the community and an international workshop on palliative care for the geriatric oncology patient. Over 600 attendees from the following countries took part in these events: USA, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, Cyprus, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Morocco, United Arab Emiratis, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen, Sudan, France and Oman.