Mozambique: Portuguese doctors to give training, design palliative care network at HCM

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Mozambique: Portuguese doctors to give training, design palliative care network at HCM

11:58 CAT | 04 Nov 2021

File photo: Courtesy of Iniciativa Médica 3M

A group of 11 Portuguese doctors are heading on Saturday for a training exchange in Mozambique, where they want to train physicians and design a palliative care network and pain units that can meet the needs of that country.

“All it takes is one doctor having more training for that to be reflected in hundreds of patients,” Hugo Rodrigues, founder of the Medical Initiative 3M (IM3M), told Lusa. At the invitation of the Maputo Central Hospital [HCM] in Maputo city, the group is promoting, for a week, the Geriatrics, Pain and Palliative Care Training Course.

Currently formed by 13 doctors from seven different specialities, the IM3M, which has no headquarters, is not collected and is not for profit, was born in 2018 when the doctor Hugo Ribeiro, then finishing his speciality in Family Medicine, was “challenged by friends to give training” in his area of preference: palliative care and geriatrics.

This year, and after 900 hours of training given in Portugal, in more than 30 courses aimed essentially at doctors, the invitation came from Maputo Central Hospital for IM3M: “three M’s because there are three medicines that are neglected: pain medicine, geriatrics and palliative care”.

Over a week, a team of 11 Portuguese doctors, from specialities such as Anesthesiology, General and Family Medicine, Internal Medicine, Vascular Surgery, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Rheumatology will be in Maputo to, in a theoretical, practical and multidisciplinary approach, promote the exchange of experiences and the exchange of protocols for action in the area of pain and palliative care among 50 clinicians.

One of the main objectives is to “leave a design of a palliative care network and pain units that may make sense for the country”, explained the doctor who coordinates the Community Support Team in Palliative Care of Vila Nova de Gaia.

According to this doctor, if in Portugal, the control of symptoms and the patient’s therapy at the end of life have always been neglected. Only now is attention being paid to palliative care. In the poorest countries, the situation is even worse.

One of the great difficulties of African countries, he said, is to retain pain medication, which is why he hopes that this initiative, funded by IM3M, will be a call for attention to its resolution, either by aid from the European Union or other international entities.

The course, already sold out, also includes a meeting with the Service Directors of Maputo Central Hospital and thematic sessions to be repeated by various specialities such as “The major geriatric syndromes and pharmacology of ageing”, “Palliative Care in surgical specialities”, “Therapeutic approach to acute pain”, “Therapeutic approach to chronic pain and oncology”, “Control of Symptoms”, “Caregivers and Grief”.

After the end of the training in Mozambique, IM3M has an invitation to Cabo Verde next year.

Source: Lusa