Dear Colleagues,
I warmly welcome you to join us at the Asia Pacific Hospice conference to be held in Taipei, Taiwan from 30 April to 3 May 2015.
I am very excited about this conference because much has been happening in the field of hospice palliative care in the Asia Pacific region. More and more countries are now building palliative care services. The Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN) has been working in Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka to build capacity for palliative care. We have encountered a tremendous thirst for knowledge. It has been most gratifying to see doctors, nurses, social workers and pharmacists make use of their new skills to improve the care of patients. We hope that many of our colleagues in these countries will be able to travel to Taiwan to share their experiences and make new contacts in the countries of the Asia Pacific.
Taiwan, with its proximity to the China Mainland and common language and cultural heritage, provides a unique opportunity to engage the palliative care community in China, which up until now, has been relatively isolated from the outside world. Though we know of many services in China, we have still a fragmented picture of palliative care development in China. I hope that this conference will allow us to have much more insight into palliative care in China. We hope to meet many new friends to exchange knowledge and experience.
The APHN was founded as a network to link up workers in palliative care in the Asia Pacific region. We continue to take on this role, not only with outreach to ountries with early development of palliative care services, but also to promote palliative care research collaborations.
So come and join us and take part in this exchange of ideas and friendship!
In warm friendship
Cynthia Goh
Associate Prof. Cynthia Goh, MD
Chairman of APHN