AB009. Proposal of a New Public Health End of Life approach for Brazil: how the Project EstaraoSeuLado—Primary Palliative Care is working and how it can help

Abstract: Brazil has 206 million people, and 1.2 million deaths and 600,000 new cases of cancer per year. Palliative Care services are patchily distributed. The Family Health Strategy, made up from 41,000 primary care teams across Brazil forms a comprehensive primary care network. The Project EstaraoSeuLado—Primary Palliative Care developed working from Community Centers. We created a model based on compassionate communities, with community carers working alongside primary care teams. We identified people who need palliative care, gave them specific care and enrolled their carers into a program of monthly meetings called “Comunidade Cuidador”. We discussed caring at end of life and provided skills training. During 2015 we ran 8 training programmes with an average of 10 carers. The major themes of discussion were carer burnout, dealing with denial and skills needed daily. The effect of these meetings was better relations between carers and professionals with expansion of the naturally occurring supportive network. The results of this project have been remarkable. The joint working of professionals and supportive networks together is recognised as being transformational. Carers themselves spread this approach by recommending it to others they know with life limiting illness. We will discuss the model and how it can be replicated more broadly across Brazil. Family Health teams can use tools of identification, evaluation and assessment working with networks including the community as an important part. We will propose a new model of End-of-Life Care to be adopted as national policy. We have implemented a compassionate community programme in the area of Rio Grande in Brazil. This has been a combination of primary care working in harmony with communities, providing education, resources and training to enhance the skill of communities to care for their dying. This is a necessary solution for Brazil, where resources and access to healthcare is limited. Our model is successful and increasing. We propose wider adoption of this model across Brazil and will present figures on the size of the challenge we face.

Keywords: Palliative care; community; public health