27 Sep 2018

Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients and their families through the prevention and relief of suffering.

Responding to a BOPA questionnaire, Princess Marina Hospital’s palliative care specialist Dr Babe Gaolebale said this was done by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.

Dr Gaolebale explained that palliative care was an approach that improved the quality of life of patients and their families facing problems associated with life-threatening illness.

She described it as an interdisciplinary medical specialty focusing on preventing and relieving unnecessary suffering for those living with life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, heart failure, chronic obstructive disease, dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

The hospital started operating a palliative care unit in 2013 offering holistic care for mainly oncology patients both adults and children, she said.

Dr Gaolebale said the unit dealt with complex pain and symptom management, individual and family counseling, linkage to Community Home Based Committees (CHBC), hospices and other psychosocial services, social workers, psychologists, dietitians among others.

She further said the service was not only limited to oncology patients but there was a small percentage of nonmalignant cases attended as consults from other services.

In Botswana palliative care could be provided through hospitals and it also through hospices and CHBC care programmes throughout the country, she said.

She said the principle was to affirm life and regarded dying as a normal process as it did not hasten nor postpone death.

Such information was usually shared with patients and their families, she explained.

“It also provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms, integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of care and also offers a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death and help patients’ families cope during the patient’s illness and in their own bereavement,” she said. ENDS