17.08.2017

The first thousand copies of the Oxford Handbook of Palliative Care for Children are to be printed in Moscow. The publishers have decided to circulate the textbook amongst specialists free of charge.

The Oxford Handbook is the best-known textbook for the alleviation of children’s suffering. The book is written by 72 specialists from 12 countries and is recognised across the world as the main textbook for children’s palliative care. The guide contains the history, development and conception of palliative care. The philosophy and psychology of dying is detailed in the book, along with clinical questions of how to control symptoms, ethics and rights, and questions regarding the organisation of palliative services.

The Orthodox charity Miloserdie (Mercy) and the publishing house Praktika are responsible for the project. Doctors, representatives of educational institutes training palliative care specialists and employees of charities can receive the new handbook, after having filled in an application on a special page.

All the work done in preparing the Oxford Handbook of Palliative Care for Children for print was carried out thanks to donations via milocerdie.ru, predanie.ru and planeta.ru. Moreover, many well-known people supported the book’s publication in Russia, including the paediatric doctor and director of a research and development institute for emergency paediatric surgery and trauma care, Professor Leonid Roshal and actor Andrei Merzlikin.

«The publication of the Oxford handbook is an important strategic step in developing palliative care specialists in Russia, who are few and far between at the moment. With this book, palliative care specialists can be trained across the whole country», Yulia Danilova said, one of the project’s initiators and the chief editor of miloserdie.ru.

According to data from the charitable foundation Detskii palliativ, no less than 180 000 children in Russia today are in need of palliative care. Each of them has a family, parents and relatives, and for that reason, the total number of people who are affected by this problem is even greater. Experts concur that there are currently not enough paediatric palliative care specialists in Russia.

This is not the first year that the Orthodox service Miloserdie has been providing palliative care to severely ill children. The project, run jointly by Miloserdie and the Marfo-Mariinsky convent, has been providing an ambulant palliative service and respite care (round the clock stays) for severely ill children since 2011.

Source: https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2017/08/17/uchebnik-po-palliativnoj-pomoshhi/