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Palliative Care has been introduced in Albania since 1993 when the first palliative care service was set up in Tirana, the capital of Albania, with the help of the Sue Ryder Care in United Kingdom. Sue Ryder Care Albania was the first project on Palliative Care in Albania and still remains the leader of palliative care in the country. Since then other projects and initiatives have been set up aiming to offer palliative care services for people in need, especially elderly people suffering from incurable diseases, mostly patients suffering from cancer with no other choice of cure and treatment. Nevertheless, the speciality of palliative care is almost new in comparison to other medical specialities, doctors in Albania are trying to introduce palliative care into the medical curricula.
Now all over the country there are different types of services on palliative care and most of them are focused on the treatment of adults with cancer. In Albania the palliative care services are more developed in the central part of the country, and there is a lack of these services in the north and south.
There are two services of palliative care in Tirana, the first one is Ryder Hospice, and the second one is the Oncologic Service at Home (OSH) – Sherbimi Onkologjik ne Banese (SHOB). In Elbasan, another city in the central part of Albania, there is another service of palliative care that offers home palliative care for 50 patients with cancer in the city. In Durres, the second biggest city in the country there are palliative care services offered by the Ryder Hospice providing home palliative care for patients with cancer in this district. There is also a service in Korca, a city in south Albania that offers palliative care for adults at home. In the north there is only one institution at the moment called Palliative Care and Education Centre that started its activity about 20 months ago. This is located in Lezha, a town near the Adriatic coast.
The services do not cover all the people in need for palliative care. There is also a great need to develop paediatric palliative care in the country. Furthermore, most regions in Albania do not have palliative care services at all.
The most developed palliative service in Albania is the palliative care at home because of the economic situation and lack on funds to run inpatient units in hospices. The only hospice in the country that has inpatient units with ten beds is the Sue Ryder Hospice in Tirana. The only project in the country that is planning to provide paediatric palliative care is PCEC-Palliative Care and Education Centre in Lezha, North Albania. The coverage is insufficient and many people suffering cancer do not have any possibility to receive palliative care services at home.
There is also a great demand for education and trainings on palliative care for health professionals and others connected to palliative care, especially family members as well as community. The most important issue about palliative care in Albania is the education and training of people involved in these projects especially medical professionals.
Also there is lack on funds to cover the expensive services of palliative care and issues related to spiritual and social care for these people in a country where freedom of faith was prohibited by the totalitarian system until 1990.
The problem of funds is related to the lack of financial support from the government. All support for these services is received from international organizations working in the field of palliative care and other health projects, respectively from fund-raising activities by the centres themselves.
Another problem of palliative care in Albania is that palliative care is not included in the medical curricula of health professionals, therefore one of the objectives of these palliative care providers in Albania is to put pressure on the government, the ministry of health and the medical state university to introduce palliative care in the medical curricula that will eventually facilitate receiving financial support from the government.
All these palliative care services are offered free of charge on a humanitarian basis and this is why there is a great demand for financial support.
The proportion of cancer and non-cancer cases is about 95% -5%, which means that palliative care services in Albania were set up primarily to serve the needs of cancer patients for palliative care.
The proportion of hospice care and home care is about 20% -80%, which means also that palliative care services are mostly home based. "Knowing that the family is the most important social structure in Albania, a powerful informal institution that dominate civil society, it may explain the Albanian people's preference to home based care."
If you would like more information about the services, please contact the respective institution listed above.
Dr. Albert Leka, MD
Palliative Care and Education Center
PCEC Programme Director
Lezha, ALBANIA
Email:
Phone: ++355682200162
this report has been taken from the CEE & FSU monthly newsletter (May 2006) http://www.hospice.hu/newsletter/
If you wish to subscribe to the English or Russian version: http://www.hospice.hu/newsletter/
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