Help bring Palliative Care to Indonesia's children

How can we help the terminally-ill children from Jakarta’s poorest families find peace?

Since our last report, we are thrilled to announce a significant breakthrough in the ongoing effort to educate medical professionals in Indonesia about the importance of palliative care. With the support of the Singapore International Foundation and the wife of the Governor of Jakarta, Mrs Veronica Tjahaja Purnama, in her role as the Chairperson of the Jakarta Cancer Foundation (YKI DKI), we will soon be offering a three-year course in palliative care for practicing medical professionals in six District Hospitals (RSUD) in Jakarta and several National Referral Hospitals. We couldn’t have achieved this landmark goal without your continued support, so a huge thank you to the Global Giving community. This step is only one along our journey towards bringing pain and symptom relief to every child in need, and we invite you to walk along with us as we continue.

Since 2006 when Rachel House was established, we’ve been working tirelessly to help terminally ill children in Jakarta’s poorest areas. If you were to come along with one of our nurses on their home visits, you would be welcomed into the homes of families living in the most disadvantaged parts of the city: near rubbish dumps and filthy ports. Some of our patients have no place to call home: under a tree during the day, and in the mosque at night. Most of the care we provide is for children during the most critical stage of their battle against cancer or HIV; we know they will most likely not have much time left, but we want to give them the dignity and comfort to enjoy their remaining days. This is a difficult task, but often it is made harder by the lack of awareness amongst the medical community and the public about palliative care.

Our dream of being able to provide the best care to every child living with life-limiting conditions from the marginalized communities is finally being realized. Between 2009 and 2012, we worked with the Singapore International Foundation to train the first group of medical professionals in palliative care. This new breakthrough that will allow us to bring palliative care to all medical professionals in the hospitals in Jakarta is the result of years of campaigning and hard work: from formalized roundtable discussions, to the day-to-day uphill struggle our nurses experience in their efforts to change the perceptions of doctors within a strict hospital hierarchy and win them over to the path of alleviation of pain. Through the new palliative care course, which will involve an intensive week-long training (comprising classroom and beside teaching) bi-annually over a 3-year period, with a week-long practicum once a year in between, we hope to bridge this knowledge gap.

This exciting new step helps Rachel House achieve one of its fundamental initial goals: that of increasing the knowledge of palliative care across the Indonesian healthcare system. In order to help patients traverse the journey seamlessly from the hospital to home, more work needs to be done at the public health clinic (Puskesmas) level, as well as the community volunteer level. Rachel House has already made significant progress in both areas through its Community Network in Palliative Care (CNPC) Program and Clinic-in-a-Box Program (see our previous reports for more details).  

Your support has been invaluable in helping us get this far, and we hope you will continue to now journey with us to the next exciting stage – that of making palliative care available to every child in Indonesia allowing them to live their remaining days amongst their loved ones, with dignity and in peace. We hope you will help us achieve our vision for a better world.