The country has just one palliative care service at present, delivering home care. This single source of palliative care development so far identified in Azerbaijan is the work of the Jewish Women’s Organisation of Azerbaijan (JWOA), which has extended its earlier activities (begun in 1992) in support of chronically ill people to promote the idea of a mobile hospice service. The service, which is based in the country’s capital Baku, aims to provide medical, psychological and social assistance to patients with a life expectancy of less than six months. The age of the patients in the pilot project varied between 30-75 years; 120 patients were assessed and 30 of these (27 women, 3 men) were admitted to the service.⁵ The pilot project (1998-9) has been described in a detailed report.⁶

The care for people with chronic and terminal illness provided by the state is limited to medical services (check-up, medication, surgery) and no social services are available for these people and their relatives. A few non-governmental organizations run projects that address the social and emotional problems of people with terminal illness. The Jewish Organization “HAVVA”, in conjunction with the Azerbaijan Psychological Association (APA) provide training courses for oncologists on psychological problems of terminally ill patients and how to communicate with them. The psychologists help people diagnosed with cancer deal with the issues of dying and provide emotional support to their relatives. However, the projects run by NGOs are unable to cover all the people in need of help. There are no institutions that professionally train people how to work with grief, loss, and bereavement.⁷

Table 1: Palliative care provision in Azerbaijan 2005

The concept of a hospice is still relatively new for Azerbaijan, although there is an extreme need for hospices in the country. For almost a decade, Gulara Narimanova, the director of INSAN Charitable Organization, has been working to establish hospices in Azerbaijan. With support from Pennzoil Caspian Corporation, a subsidiary of Devon Energy Corporation, plans for Azerbaijan's first hospice are finally underway. Equipment and furnishings for the new hospices have been donated by Dr. Wayne H. Roberts of Edmond, Oklahoma, whose son Wayne works as a geologist with Devon Energy in Oklahoma City. When Dr. Roberts retired from medicine in June 2000 after 63 years of practice, he gave Azerbaijan the medical equipment from Parkside Hospital, which he had built and opened in 1950. The donation includes operating room equipment, surgical tools and lab equipment, plus furnishings for 25 hospital rooms - hospital beds, stands, screens, sheets and blankets. TransOceanic Caspian packed the equipment into a container for its lengthy voyage. Devon Energy paid for the shipping from the United States to Baku and is now working with INSAN to set up the hospices. The first hospice will be located at the Oncology Center in Baku, which treats approximately 3,000 cancer patients each year. Hospices will also be established in the regions at Ali Bayramli and Imishli - the latter, primarily to serve the refugee population. Remaining equipment will be distributed to the Bone Tuberculosis Sanatorium for Children in Zagulba, which Pennzoil Caspian has sponsored since 1996.⁸