Hospice and Palliative Care in Southeast Asia

Michael Wright is a co-founder of Lancaster University's International Observatory on End of Life Care and remains associated with its activities as an honorary research fellow. During a varied professional life he has held the positions of parish priest, high school head teacher, hospital chaplain and senior research fellow. His interests lie in the areas of spirituality, hospice history, the global analysis of palliative care, and healing in the context of mortality. He currently combines his Observatory activities with independent consultancy, and priestly support in the Anglican dioceses of Sheffield, Wakefield and Europe. Ednin Hamzah trained as a physician and general practitioner in the North of England. In 1997 he was appointed as the Chief Executive Officer / Medical Director of Hospis Malaysia, the first full time clinical appointment in palliative care in Malaysia. Working in a clinical, educational and administrative environment, he has been involved in the areas of palliative care, pain and oncology throughout Malaysia and the region. Temsak Phungrassami is a radiation oncologist in the medical school at Prince of Songkla University, Thailand. During his professional life with cancer patients he became interested in palliative care. Based on his experiences in Australia the hospital-based palliative care system was established in his medical school hospital. He currently combines the modern palliative care system with Buddhist cultural wisdom to improve the care of these patients both locally and nationally in his country. Agnes Bausa-Claudio finished training in Family Medicine in 2001. In 2002 UP-PGH Family Medicine Department opened its Fellowship Training Program in Hospice & Palliative Care, the first in the country, in which she was one of the first of the two fellows trained. She visited Hospis Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and hospices in Singapore and United States. Before the end of 2002, she was one of the founders of Palliative Care Volunteer Group, Inc (PALCARE). In 2004 she formally joined the Department of Family & Community Medicine of UP-PGH and became the Hospice Fellowship Training Coordinator. Working in the academe she felt the need for further study, and applied and was granted a scholarship from Help the Hospices for the Post Graduate Diploma in Palliative Care Distance Education in Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia. Her work focuses on undergraduate teaching, clinical training, and administrative and developing palliative care in different community and private hospitals in Metro Manila.

Foreword by Dr Cynthia Goh ; 1. Introduction ; 2. Malaysia ; 3. Thailand ; 4. The Philippines ; Appendices