By Lamin Bangura
Last Saturday, Shepherds Hospice Sierra Leone, in collaboration with The World Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance, celebrated World Hospice and Palliative Care Day 2025 at their Macdonald Head Office, Waterloo-Tombo Highway, Western rural of Freetown.
The Theme for the year 2025: Achieving the promise: Universal Access to Palliative became a subject of the celebration, as several concerns were raised to address and salvage issues on ‘’Universal Access to Palliative care”
In delivering his keynote address, Chief Executive Officer and Founder for Shepherd’s Hospice Sierra Leone Chapter, Gabriel Madiye, underscored the significance behind the celebration of ‘’World Hospice and Palliative Care Day’’. He explained that their work is to always ensure that people suffering from pain are given pain relievers, which might help them ease the burden of pain they go through.
CEO Madiye added that though their work as Palliative Care Givers focuses on managing pain, it is part of their policy to also ensure the victims will not die with pain.
He advocated for the integration of Palliative Care into the Public Health Service system, so as to address concerns of those suffering from chronic illness, which will prevent them from dying or suffer in pain. He stressed that Medicines like Morphine, tramadol etc. which are usually prescribed for pain management, are being misused and abused today, causing serious threat towards the growing youthful population in the country.
CEO Madiye’s advocacy is for government to always make available drugs that are necessarily prescribed for pain in all or major public hospitals and health centers in the country. Therefore, ‘‘We are calling on the government to introduce public health Palliative Care, otherwise, we will continue to lose more people in pain’’ Madiye stated.
Sierra Leone as a country, he said, is suffering from the epidemic of pain, referencing recent Statistics of people living with HIV. Even though some say over 70,000 are living with the virus, but the reality behind that is that there are quite a good number among them who lack the opportunity to get the necessary drugs. Therefore, he maintained that Government should ensure we have hospitals that can admit advance HIV Patients. Speaking about Tuberculosis, CEO Madiye categorized all of them as human rights issues, for which we must ensure government take full responsibility.
He also raised similar concern for women suffering from cancer which he said is another life threatening illness