Published on: June 22, 2022

A group of children’s palliative care practitioners have come together to help palliative care needs of children and their clinicians in Ukraine.

‘The Rome Declaration of Palliative Care for Children in Ukraine’ states that relief of serious health-related suffering is the right of every child. The global Children’s Palliative Care (CPC) community have committed to working together and ensuring quality palliative care for children with serious health conditions by providing knowledge and skilled multi-disciplinary teams in humanitarian settings.

The declaration was made as a reaction to the appalling loss of life, displacement, and cruel impact of war on patients, personnel, facilities and health resources in Ukraine. Recognising the fact that children’s palliative care was not acknowledged as a priority by health services in humanitarian crises, participants pledged to take responsibility for doing “all we can” to help relieve suffering of vulnerable children and support colleagues who cared for them.

A number of professionals and organisations committed to help children needing palliative care and their families by supporting existing services. They would also work on advocacy with policy makers and donors for resources during the crisis and while rebuilding services to ensure adequate palliative medicine supplies, including opioids. They would promote spiritual and psycho-social support for children, and their families and colleagues.

Four paediatric palliative care clinicians working in Ukraine and a paediatrician from St Jude who has been working with SAFERUkraine provided insight into the difficulties they were experiencing. Fellow clinicians promised to support palliative care services to children from Ukraine being cared for by palliative care organisations in other countries.

Global CPC community, including Fondazione Maruzza ICPCN, EAPC, PallCHASE, St Jude’s Global, and GWISH have committed to collaborate to make up a rich resource of knowledge and skills to support their colleagues.

Those who wish to support the CPC community in Ukraine can sign the declaration, either as an individual, or as a representative of an institution or organisation.

For more details follow the link: https://www.pallchase.org/the-rome-declaration/