April 2005

APB Renders Support to Palliative Care Project In Vietnam

To help Vietnam build up its community-based care, the APB Foundation rendered its support to the Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) Foundation - Singapore Volunteers Overseas Specialist Team (Palliative Care) Project organized by the Singapore International Foundation.

Starting from this year till 2007, Singapore medical specialists comprising doctors and nurses will visit the Cho Ray Hospital in Ho Chi Min City and the National Cancer Hospital in Hanoi four times a year to impart palliative care practices to the medical practitioners from the two hospitals. Palliative care is a cost-effective system of health care that serves to offer pain relief, psychological counselling and other measures that enhance the quality of life of patients as well as that of their friends and family.

The project meets the APB Foundation's objective to play a constructive and developmental role to help build more effective communities by focusing on providing stability and supporting human development both at home and around the Asia Pacific region. Mr Koh Poh Tiong, Chairman, Executive Committee, APB Foundation, explained, "Through the programme, medical experts from Singapore will impart to Vietnamese healthcare givers, palliative care practices that have been successfully implemented in Singapore. Doctors and nurses in Vietnam will then adapt these skills to suit the local environment and provide better care for the terminally-ill. Such skills will be transferred to other medical practitioners in other parts of Vietnam. This will ensure that those who reside in the more remote areas outside of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi will also benefit from the programme."

Vietnam received the first team of Singaporean medical specialists in Ho Chi Minh City in April 2005. Hanoi saw the second team of volunteers arriving in May 2005.

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