It has been just over a year since the 2025 Palliative Care Conference brought palliative care practitioners together in Durban, South Africa, under the theme Revolution. Evolution. Solution. We recently reread the conference snapshot report, kindly compiled and shared by Mundipharma, and found it just as valuable to engage with […]

PALPRAC’s palliative care bursaries are helping to build the workforce South Africa needs. Building palliative care capacity means investing in the people who deliver it. Thanks to the generous support of our donor, PALPRAC has awarded a series of bursaries in 2026. Recipients come from areas with limited access to […]

In February 2026, a few PALPRAC members had the privilege of attending the UCT Excellence in Deceased Donation Course. It was valuable to connect with colleagues committed to learning and, in doing so, strengthening donation practices within our healthcare system. The interactive, two-day, in-person course covered the legal and ethical […]

On 11 October 2025, the world will come together to mark World Hospice & Palliative Care Day (WHPCD). This year’s theme says it all: “Achieving the Promise: Universal Access to Palliative Care.”  And what better way to honour that than by making learning more accessible?  To celebrate, PALPRAC is offering […]

From 18 to 21 June 2025, PALPRAC stood alongside APCC and PatchSA as co-hosts of the 2025 South African Palliative Care Conference in Durban. The theme was Revolution. Evolution. Solution. Over 300 healthcare professionals from across the country came together to share, learn and chart the future of palliative care […]

The National Department of Health hosted a national palliative care workshop on the 14th  May 2025 in Tswane to review the National Policy Framework and Strategy on Palliative Care, which lapsed in 2022. Palliative care colleagues from across the country engaged in robust discussions to ensure that access to palliative […]

I recently had the privilege of attending the book launch of Malika Ndlovu’s new book, Griefseed. Many of you will remember the moving opening performance by this writer, poet, curator, and applied arts practitioner at the 2023 Palliative Care Conference in Cape Town.  The launch, held at Exclusive Books in […]

Palliative care remains one of the most underutilised medical services worldwide, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief’s 2017 report and the WHO’s 2023 report, “Left behind in pain: Extent and causes of global variations in access to morphine for medical […]

The UCT Summer School is an annual initiative by the University of Cape Town (UCT) that brings together members of the public for intellectually stimulating lectures across a variety of disciplines. This much-anticipated event aims to make academic knowledge accessible to everyone, offering a platform for learning and discussion. One […]

The PALPRAC team was excited to head to Polokwane for a Palliative Care Awareness Day, hosted on the 5th of December 2024 in partnership with the Limpopo Department of Health. This event brought together participants from all corners of the province, with some travelling from as far as Groblersdal to […]

The 2024 PainSA Congress recently took place in Durban (17th-19th May 2024) and was a resounding success. Esteemed colleagues from around the world gathered to share valuable insights and discuss advancements in pain management.  PainSA, the South African chapter of the International Association for the Study of Pain, aims to […]

In our final blog series on the PG- Dip Palliative Medicine offered by UCT, we spoke to Bubbly Zimbabwean-born family physician Dr Natsayi Mujuru, who completed her PG Dip in 2019 and is currently completing her MPhil. She is an esteemed physician based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, working in a hospice […]