The World Innovation Summit for Health
and the Pontifical Academy for Life
present a special symposium on
Religion And Medical Ethics
11-12 December 2019,
Augustinianum Congress Centre,
Via Paolo VI, Rome
This special symposium examines the role that religion plays in providing holistic care in the context of medical ethics. By focusing on the intersection of belief-based and evidence-based approaches to care, speakers and participants will have the opportunity to highlight and explore the benefits of interdisciplinary and interfaith approaches to treating the body, mind and soul.
Academic partner for the event: The BMJ.
The symposium will focus on two areas of healthcare:
Palliative Care
The Mental Health of the Elderly
Sessions include a focus on:
- Christian, Islamic and medical perspectives on ethics and palliative care
- Safeguarding the mental health of elderly patients receiving palliative care
- Interfaith approaches to promoting the role of spirituality in palliative care
- Perspectives on pediatric palliative care
- The mental health and wellbeing of older people: spiritual opportunities and challenges
- Maintaining the bridge of love between people with dementia and their carers
- Mental health and the elderly: the intersection of spirituality, caregiving and medicine
- Suicide and life-threatening behavior among the elderly
Note that simultaneous translation between English, Italian and Arabic will be available throughout the event.
https://ethics.wish.org.qa/program-details/
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WISH is a global healthcare community dedicated to capturing and disseminating the best evidence-based ideas and practices. (World Innovation Summit for Health – WISH)
Mission:
- We forge connections and help build action-driven communities of knowledge who work together to address today’s most pressing global healthcare challenges.
- We convene and collaborate with the world’s leading experts and the highest levels of decision-makers.
- We create and disseminate world-class, evidence-based content and knowledge.
- We promote active learning and support within and between communities.
- We contribute to the vision and mission of Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development and Qatar National Vision 2030, and serve to underscore Qatar’s pioneering role as an emerging center for healthcare innovation.
- We showcase innovations that will make a difference for healthcare communities everywhere.
- We aim to influence healthcare policy globally.
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Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development (QF) is a private, non-profit organisation that is supporting Qatar on its journey from a carbon-based economy to knowledge-based economy by unlocking human potential for the benefit of not only Qatar, but the world. Founded in 1995 by His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, Amir of Qatar, QF is chaired by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser.
QF carries out its mission through three strategic pillars: education, science and research, and community development. QF’s education pillar brings world-class universities to Qatar to help create an education sector in which young people can develop the attitudes and skills required for a knowledge economy. Meanwhile, its science and research pillar builds Qatar’s innovation and technology capacity by developing and commercialising solutions through key sciences. Finally, its community development pillar helps foster a progressive society while also enhancing cultural life, protecting Qatar’s heritage and addressing immediate social needs in the community.
For a complete list of QF’s initiatives and projects, visit http://www.qf.org.qa.
Sultana Afdhal
Before being appointed as Chief Executive Officer of WISH in February 2018, Sultana Afdhal was WISH’s Partnerships and Outreach Manager. In that capacity she worked to forge strong relationships between WISH and major local stakeholders, including Hamad Medical Corporation, the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Education, and the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy.
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The Pontifical Academy for Life
Palliative Care Project
The Pontifical Academy for Life has taken up the words pronounced by Pope Francis during his Audience of the XXII General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the context of which the Workshop "Assisting the Elderly and Palliative Care" took place. Those words were: «Palliative care accomplishes something equally important: it values the person. I exhort all those who, in various ways, are involved in the field of palliative care, to practice this task keeping the spirit of service intact and remembering that all medical knowledge is truly science, in its noblest significance, only if used as aid in view of the good of man, a good which is never accomplished “against” the life and dignity of man».
The Pontifical Academy for Life, welcoming the exhortation of Pope Francis, launched the PAL-LIFE Project to promote initiatives in favor of the development and dissemination of palliative care worldwide as well as the promotion of a culture of care and accompaniment of sick until the passage of death.
The members of the PALLIFE Study Group are: Eduardo Bruera (University of Houston, U.S.), Liliana de Lima e Katherine Pettus (International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care), Christina Puchalski (The George Washington University's Institute for Spirituality and Health, Washington, D.C.), Emmanuel Luyirika (African Palliative Care Association), M. R. Rajagopal (Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Sciences, India), Sr. Jinsun Yong (Catholic University of Korea), Samy Alsirafy (Cairo University, Egypt), Daniela Mosoiu (Hospice “Casa Sperantei”, Romania), Carlos Centeno (University of Navarra, Spain), Thomas Sitte (Deutsche PalliativStiftung, Germany).
The White Book: developed by the Vatican-based Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), describes the broad-based, expert-led effort to develop recommendations for improving global palliative care. Advances in palliative care are needed to aid the more than 25 million people who die each year with serious health-related suffering, as the current supply of palliative care cannot meet the growing demand. The White Book is a product of the work by a group of experts in palliative care advocacy who represent different faiths and were invited by the PAV to develop strategic recommendations to advance global palliative care. The expert group identified 43 recommendations and 13 stakeholder groups, targeting the most important recommendations for each stakeholder group.
The English version of the "White Paper" was presented in Vatican, in September 2018.
The German translation was presented in Berlin, May 23, 2019.
Italian version from November 2019.
International events have already been held: in Houston, Usa (2018); in Doha, in Qatar (2019), in Rome (2018) and in Milan (2019). In May 2019 there was a meeting in Brazil for implementation in Latin America and in September 2019 in Rwanda to address the issue on the African continent.
Interreligious Dialogue: is important the promotion of palliative care in the ecumenical and interreligious context. Two joint declarations have already been signed: between the Pontifical Academy for Life and the American Methodist Church and the Qatar Foundation.
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On October 28, 2019 in the Casina Pio IV (Pontifical Academy for Sciences, Vatican City):
- Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life,
and other Representatives, have signed the
POSITION PAPER OF THE ABRAHAMIC MONOTHEISTIC RELIGIONS ON MATTERS CONCERNING THE END-OF-LIFE
The Position Paper was prepared by the Pontifical Academy for Life under the mandate of Pope Francis.
On October 28th Pope Francis has received the main signers, the deputies of the Patriarchate of Costantinoples, of the Patriarchate of Moscow and others from the Islam world, and the Jewish world, between the Chief Rabbi of Rome.
Excerpts from the Position Paper:
"We encourage and support validated and professional palliative care everywhere and for everyone. Even when efforts to continue staving off death seems unreasonably burdensome, we are morally and religiously duty-bound to provide comfort, effective pain and symptoms relief, companionship, care and spiritual assistance to the dying patient and to her/his family.
We commend laws and policies that protect the rights and the dignity of the dying patient, in order to avoid euthanasia and promote palliative care.
We call upon all policy-makers and health-care providers to familiarize themselves with this wide-ranging Abrahamic monotheistic perspective and teaching in order to provide the best care to dying patients and to their families who adhere to the religious norms and guidance of their respective religious traditions.
We are committed to involving the other religions and all people of goodwill".
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JOINT DECLARATION on END OF LIFE AND PALLIATIVE CARE
By the Pontifical Academy for Life and the World Innovation Summit for Health
While we applaud medical science for advances to prevent and cure disease, we recognize that every life will ultimately end in death. For many, however, death is not considered as an unrewarding journey; it is the passing through a door that opens to eternal life in the hereafter.
The Promotion of Palliative Care
We encourage palliative care to support and provide companionship during illness and at the end of life. The basic philosophy of palliative care is to achieve the best quality of life for patients suffering incurable, progressive illness even when their illness cannot be cured. Palliative care is a health care specialty that is both a philosophy of care and an organized, highly structured system for delivering care. Palliative care services are critical for realizing the most ancient mission of medicine “to care even when it cannot cure.” Palliative care is an expression of the truly human devotion to taking care of one another, especially of those who suffer. We should encourage professionals and students to specialize in this type of assistance which is no less valuable though it may not be considered “life-saving.” Palliative care accomplishes something vitally important: it values the person.
Noting that the scriptures of faith traditions emphasize divine purpose for all persons, regardless of health, we proclaim that:
- We reject any form of pressure upon the dying to end their lives.
- We encourage and support the concept of palliative care in all places and for everyone.
- We affirm laws and policies that protect the rights and dignity of the dying.
- Even when staving off death seems futile or unreasonably burdensome to continue, we must seek to offer comfort care: effective pain relief, companionship, and support the patient in the hard and sacred work of preparing for death.
- We as a society must assure that patients’ desire not to be a burden does not tempt them to choose death rather than receiving the care and support that could enable them to live out their remaining time in comfort and peace.
- We believe that all health care workers are bound to create the conditions by which religious assistance is assured to anyone who asks for it, either expressly or implicitly.
- We commit to using our knowledge and research to shape policies that encompass social, physical and spiritual care to provide more informed care for those facing grave illness and death.
- We commit to engaging the community regarding the issues of bioethics as well as the techniques of compassionate companionship for those who are suffering and dying.
- We commit to raise public awareness about palliative care through teaching resources and adult programs to consider treatments for the suffering and the dying in the context of religious affirmations of God’s providence and hope.
- We commit to providing succor to the family and loved ones of the dying.
Doha, January 22 2019
