Selian Lutheran Hospital

Volunteers in the local church community are trained in basic skills to care for the ill and dying in their villages. A week long training course for health professionals is based upon the Hospice Uganda and Nairobi Hospice training modules. Kristopher Hartwig has been appointed to implement palliative care into 20 Lutheran Hospitals in the country. One of these is Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre, one of the five big zonal institutions in Tanzania that incorporates a medical school.

Muheza Hospice Care

Approximately 90 village health workers and 30 community volunteers have been trained in simple techniques to ensure a better quality of home based care. They receive a small supplement from the hospice because “…they visit patients in their homes, they bring their books in, they look after their morphine, they look after their medication”²³. The medical director has a diploma in palliative care. Mary Aloyce, a palliative care nurse, gained her diploma in palliative medicine from Makerere University in Uganda in 2004 and is one of the first nurses in Tanzania to achieve this qualification.

PASADA

Most staff members are trained in palliative care by Hospice Uganda. PASADA designs and organises a number of courses and workshops for health workers in Tanzania. The main courses include VCT and home-based care for nurses. Elements of palliative care are included in the home based care training. The demand for workshops on how to establish HIV/AIDS services has pressurised the organisation to consider creating a formal training unit. The model of care used here can be effectively replicated to other national HIV/AIDS bodies, but resources are minimal. Many of the social workers and counsellors involved in the Orphans Department have received training in psychosocial counselling and bereavement in Zimbabwe and Uganda

Ocean Road Cancer Institute

Specialist palliative care training of staff is undertaken at Hospice Uganda. The Head of the Palliative Care team studied palliative care in South Africa in 2004. The palliative care team organises weekly internal training sessions with the other doctors at the hospital. Various topics have been presented, including morphine use, holistic care, and breaking bad news to the patient and family. Efforts are made to familiarise the four oncologists at the hospital with palliative care principles.