Message from Dr Cynthia Goh and Dr Ednin Hamzah

I would like to welcome you warmly to the 14th Asia Pacific Hospice & Palliative Care Conference, the biennial conference of the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN), this time jointly organized with Hospice Palliative Care Japan.

This is the conference that every two years brings together all of us working in hospice and palliative care in the Asia Pacific region. Up until now, we had always looked forward to gathering in one of the APHN sectors to catch up with one another, renew friendships and make new friends. This time, it will be different.

I congratulate our colleagues in Japan for their courage and ingenuity in hosting a virtual conference for the first time, in this era of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you for taking on this challenge!

Our knowledge base in hospice and palliative care continues to expand, and I am glad to see that many of our colleagues in Asia and the Pacific region are contributing to this knowledge base. This is shown by the 307 abstracts that have been received. I hope that the new knowledge will not only be shared, but also discussed, and that new projects may grow from those discussions. The Research Committee of the APHN is now an active entity to support collaborative research in the region. Please do get in touch with them for projects!

While much of the experience gathered from elsewhere around the globe is relevant to our practice, there is nothing like our own data to validate what we do and to generate new discoveries that may be useful worldwide.

The future is bright for the development of hospice and palliative care in the Asia Pacific region. Not only are services developing in many of the APHN sectors that previously had much fewer services, academic units in Palliative Medicine and Palliative Nursing are growing, and the knowledge and skills of hospice and palliative care are spreading throughout the health sectors.

We hope that this virtual conference will enable many more people to access the conference content!
Looking forward to meeting you online!

Dr. Ednin Hamzah Chair, APHN

A/Prof Cynthia Goh Chair, APHN Advisory Committee