Dr Lesley Henson, our new Clinical Lecturer
Lesley Henson
We are delighted that at the end of September Dr Lesley Henson will take over from Dr Jo Dunn as Clinical Lecturer at the Makerere Palliative Care Unit in Kampala.
Lesley is a registrar in palliative care, currently training in London and South East England. Before specialising she trained in general medicine after graduating from Guy's, King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine in 2005. At present she works on the in-patient unit at Hospice in the Weald, Tunbridge Wells. The ward has 14 beds, provides specialist palliative care through a multidisciplinary team and benefits from close links to the local hospital. In her spare time she enjoys cooking, socialising and cycling. In anticipation of working with Cairdeas she said:
Our new trustees
Margery Jackson
Margery Jackson
I am a member of Kirkintilloch Baptist Church which was where I first heard about Cairdeas and met its medical director, Mhoira Leng. Mhoira’s enthusiasm for her work in India and Uganda is infectious and it has been great to learn more about it and to support Mhoira as one of our mission partners at the church in Kirkintilloch where I chair the World Mission group.
My previous involvement with work overseas has been mainly through a long association with Tearfund: first as a volunteer, then two years working in a refugee camp in Thailand, and latterly as a member of the Volunteer Management team in Scotland. I have also served on the Personnel Committee of Interserve Scotland.
Jane Williams
Jane Williams
I have recently joined Cairdeas, and I hope that some of my previous experiences will be useful to the Trust and the people it aims to serve. I moved to Aberdeen in the early nineties, from the south of England, where I worked for the Audit Commission. In Aberdeen I was a senior manager in the NHS for 10 years, working in primary care. I then joined Bethany Christian Trust, based in Edinburgh, as Director of Community Services. Bethany works with the homeless, and the services we provided included housing support, community education, furniture recycling and drop-in services. During this time my late husband and I explored a number of different mission opportunities and we were drawn to work in Africa. We spent a few months in Zambia working with a HIV / AIDs project, which provided home based care and work opportunities; we also considered similar work in Uganda, both in Jinja and Kampala, visiting projects run by different Pentecostal churches.
We were accepted by BMS Worldmission to work with them, and we considered a placement in Afghanistan, where we would have worked administering local health facilities, but after a short visit we came to the mutual decision that this was not for us! BMS finally placed us in Cyprus, working with a Christian media organisation, serving the Middle East and North Africa, and we stayed there until my husband’s illness forced us to return to the UK.
In many ways working with Cairdeas feels as if I am coming back to my original sphere of interest, and I feel privileged that I have already had the opportunity to see ordinary people and churches in Africa in action to relieve the suffering of terminally ill patients.
Dr Grahame Tosh FRCA FRCP
Grahame and Cheryl Tosh
I have been in the specialty of palliative medicine for over twenty years and have been a consultant in Southend in Essex since 1993. During this time I have formed a network of hospitals, hospices and community services, and we provide integrated palliative care to our local population of nearly 750,000. I set up training in the area and we now train consultants, registrars, GPs and many others. I have served on our regional training committee for many years. My interest in strategic service development has led me into management and for the last eight years I have been the Medical Director of Southend Hospital, a medium large acute foundation trust. I still practise in my specialty and have developed my interest in overseas training and development. I have provided opportunities for colleagues from India to work in the UK and latterly have met and worked with Mhoira Leng under the auspices or Cairdeas. We trained at the same time, although at opposite ends of the UK, and although I am English my father was from Aberdeen and this connection still means a lot to me.
I have travelled to Mizoram in north east India twice and found it inspiring and educational as well as an opportunity to share and help. I look forward to helping Cairdeas, both in the UK and abroad, achieve its objectives - I would love to spend more time abroad personally helping services to get started and become self-sustaining, but I also believe I have a lot to offer while my present job keeps me rooted in the UK for most of the year.
I am married to Cheryl, who recently travelled to India with me, and we have three grown-up children. We worship at West Leigh Baptist Church and are involved with teaching the younger end of the age spectrum.
I believe a huge amount can be achieved by smaller charities with commitment and inspiration, particularly when working in partnerships with local people and other agencies. It is a privilege for me to join the team and I really hope and pray that I can be of service.
Morphine shortage - Thank You!
This is a very informative article about the poor access to morphine in many African countries.
In December we reported that there was a serious problem with unavailability of morphine at Mulago Hospital in Kampala due to difficulties in the normal supplies. In the meantime we are able to purchase morphine locally with the help of Hospice Africa Uganda - but this, of course, required funds which we did not have. So we made this urgent need the subject of our Christmas appeal - our target was £4500 which should be enough to pay for morphine for all those in the hospital who need it, for about 3 months by when we hope the normal supply will be resumed.
Your response was wonderful. Even before Christmas we had almost reached our target, and by the time we closed the appeal early this year we had raised nearly £7000 which with Gift Aid totalled just over £8000. Half of this has been used to pay for morphine, and the normal supply of morphine is now more reliable. The surplus will be used by the Palliative Care Unit at the hospital, especially to pay for further palliative care training of the nurses, which includes administering morphine.
Pain relief as a human right - Declaration of Montreal
Many of those who support Cairdeas will recall that in 2008 The International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC) and the Worldwide Palliative Care Alliance (WPCA) developed a Joint Declaration and Statement of Commitment on Palliative Care and Pain Treatment as Human Rights, which Cairdeas signed. And in the following year Human Rights Watch published their report 'Please, don’t make us suffer any more: Access to pain treatment as a human right' which was a comprehensive review of the issues, identifying the obstacles to providing effective palliative care, and making recommendations to global policy makers.
We are pleased to say that the issue is gathering momentum: in October last year the International Association for the Study of Pain hosted the first International Pain Summit at which they launched the Declaration of Montreal, affirming that pain management is a fundamental human right and calling on all governments to honour their obligations in this respect. Cairdeas has signed this declaration and encourages individuals who share this concern to sign on their own behalf.
You can sign the Declaration here.
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