The next WF Biennial Congress will be organized by DMD Mexico and will take place from October 27 to 31, 2020 in Mexico City with the theme:
Options and Dignity at the End of Life. A Bioethical Approach.
We will soon announce the Congress website where we will make known the program, the activities, and the registration procedure for those interested in attending the Congress.
FOR THE RIGHT TO DIE WITH DIGNITY (DMD) STARTS ITS ACTIVITIES TOWARDS THE 2020 WORLD CONGRESS
They staged the play La Lechuga (The Lettuce) that brings up the urgent need of discussing the theme of the options to die with dignity.
With the aim of warming up the debate on the extremely controversial topic of the right to a dignified death, the non-for-profit association For the Right to Die with Dignity (DMD), sponsored by the ESRU Foundation, presented one single showing of the black humor and disturbing play La Lechuga, which addresses from different viewpoints what a family lives when a close relative becomes terminally ill.
Featured notes
Omission of palliative care can be deemed as torture: such it is said →
La Jornada
Mexico has many years of delay in palliative care, both in the training of specialists and in the construction of infrastructure and adequate budgetary support. Mexico is many years behind in palliative care, both in training of specialists and in the creation of an adequate infrastructure and budgetary support…
New Zealand to vote in referendum on euthanasia →
The Guardian
New Zealand is to become the first country in the world to put euthanasia to a binding public vote after its lawmakers passed a bill laying out what the country’s assisted dying regime would be. The law, which would allow terminally ill people with less than six months to live to choose assisted dying if approved by two doctors…
Daughter shares heartbreaking final photo of parents in hospital after mum, 80, was accused of murdering her dad, 81 →
The Sun
A HEARTBROKEN daughter has shared the final photograph of her parents together – as she called for an urgent change in the law on assisted suicide…
To think
Flirting with death →
Nexos
Man faces a problem with death, although not due to his biological dimension, that is, the physical process through which the body reaches the definitive point of its deterioration. Rather, the difficulty is that, unlike the rest of the animals, the human being is the only one aware of his finitude. Therefore, a common thread linking together humanity’s diverse attitudes concerning death is its impulse to hide and repress its consciousness that it will inevitably turn up. This is how Norbert Elias starts his work, The Loneliness of the Dying[i], a booklet whose brief length contrasts with the depth of his reflections…
Use of Traditional Medicine and Marijuana, in the New Health Law →
La Jornada
The medical and therapeutic use of marijuana and its byproducts, the dignified death, as well as the preservation and recovery of traditional indigenous medicine are rights established in the local Constitution that will have to be integrated into the initiative of a new health law that will be presented to the Mexico City Congress during the next normal legislative session…
Topic of the month
Palliative Care
What is palliative care?
It is the branch of medicine defined as the integral and interdisciplinary care that is provided to the patient and his family when a life-threatening condition is diagnosed, regardless of the outcome.
In the case of the patient’s death, the palliative caregivers keep helping the family through the grieving process.
What is its purpose
Palliative care purpose is to improve the quality of life of patients and their loved ones when they face the challenges typical of a life-threatening diagnosis. It prevents and alleviates suffering through the early identification, evaluation and correct treatment of pain and other problems, whether physical, psychosocial or spiritual.
What do the palliative caregivers do?
- They provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary care to the patient and his family, when there is a condition endangering life.
- They contain, accompany, listen, translate the language of the healing team to the patients and their loved ones; they advise them to making decisions; they coordinate the logistics of the patient’s care; and they are intermediaries between patients and their loved ones.
- They eliminate the taboos of the patient and his family as to the disease, the pain, the death, the farewell and the grieving, thus allowing to create a loving end of life.
Articles about Palliative Care
Palliative care and dignified death in the Mexican Constitution →
El Semanario
Last July 1st, a reform promoted by Senator Miguel Ángel Mancera was approved unanimously by the Senate to incorporate palliative care and the use of controlled medicines for it in Article 4 of the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States…
IPN promotes palliative care speciality →
Instituto Politécnico Nacional
To improve palliative care in terminally ill patients, the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) seeks to promote a specialty in that area, so it works on the design of the academic program that it intends to implement together with the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS)…
Glossary
Advance Will
It is a way allowing a competent person to put in writing his will concerning the treatments he would want or he would not want to receive if he were to find himself in a situation where he could not express his will himself. The advance directive comes into force when the person becomes unable to make those decisions.
Assisted Suicide
It is the help that a doctor gives to a patient in response to his request, and it consists in providing him with the means to put an end to his life. The help may be to give him a prescription for a lethal dose of a drug or the drug itself. The patient himself executes the final action that causes death.
Euthanasia
Etymologically it means “good death”, and it refers to the action that a doctor performs to induce the death of a patient who has freely requested it because he is enduring an intolerable suffering for which there is no relief, and that is caused by a disease or a medical condition for which there are no healing options.
Palliative Care
It is the active and total care of those patients who do not respond to a healing treatment, in which it is a priority to provide relief through the treatment of pain and other symptoms, as well as to care for the psychological, social and spiritual aspects.
