CANSA Booklets to Help Manage Cancer Patients’ Pain in the Home

Download CANSA At Home Guide for Children with Pain

Download CANSA At Home Guide for Adults with Pain

12 October 2020 – CANSA and partners announce the release of two booklets, the ‘CANSA At Home Pain Guide’ and the ‘CANSA At Home Guide for Children with Pain’ to help patients, loved ones, families and caregivers to cope with pain management. #CANSAAtHomePainGuides #CANSACares #MyCareMyComfort

Zodwa Sithole, CANSA’s Head of Advocacy states, “In October, the spotlight is usually placed on palliative care as part of World Hospice and Palliative Care Day, promoting awareness regarding caring of patients and their families facing challenges associated with life-threatening illness. So, it’s rewarding for us to contribute and make these CANSA At Home Pain Guides to download. The booklets cover pain management for adults and children in a user-friendly manner that helps simplify a normally complicated process. It presents a mixture of diagrams, pain identification charts and simple text and images to guide patients and others through the understanding and management of pain.”

CANSA collaborated with partners, PALPRAC (The Association of Palliative Care Practitioners of South Africa), Umduduzi Children’s Hospice and Patch, who are experts in the field to create these useful booklets. The partners were eager to get on board and contribute their expertise to make these booklets a reality.

“PALPRAC appreciates the collaboration with CANSA on the Guide. Pain is one symptom that can severely compromise a patient’s dignity and quality of life. It can be effectively treated, even in rural or poorly resourced areas. People need to know that they can ask for help. Health care providers, including professional nurses, need to be properly trained in assessing and treating pain. Morphine should be available where and when needed. Ideally regulations should be changed so that professional nurses are able to prescribe this cost-effective, dignity-saving drug,” explains Dr Margie Venter, Chairperson of PALPRAC.

Gerda Strauss, CANSA’s Head of Service adds, “CANSA plays an important role, in educating and advising family members and caregivers of cancer patients on how to help manage a patient’s pain in the home. In 2020, cancer patients should not be in pain. Managing pain effectively throughout treatment and at the end of life will ensure that cancer patients have a less traumatic experience and a good quality of life. This also reduces the distress experienced by loved ones who feel helpless when they are uninformed on how to help manage their loved one’s pain. The aim is to further translate the guide into different languages making it accessible to many more communities”

CANSA also offers home-based care services to cancer patients at a reduced cost, paid for service or through medical aid.

CANSA Pain App

Download our CANSA Pain App developed in partnership with Pfizer as a further resource to help manage your pain:

(For more information, please contact Lucy Balona, Head: Marketing and Communication at CANSA at email lbalona@cansa.org.za. Call 011 616 7662 or mobile 082 459 5230.)

About PALPRAC

PALPRAC, the Association of Palliative Care Practitioners of South Africa was founded in 2018. As a group of like-minded doctors, who have all done further training in palliative care, PALPRAC’s mission is to enable access to palliative care for all South Africans. Palliative care is a type of medical care that improves the quality of life of people and their loved ones, living with serious illnesses like cancer. Attention is paid to treating distressing symptoms such as pain, and doing so with the whole person in mind. This means that one would look at the physical, but also the emotional and spiritual aspects of that person that might influence their pain experience. The care is much more person-centered than disease-centered. PALPRAC believes that everyone with serious illness can do with a little palliative care, one way or another. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to make that possible.

About CANSA

CANSA offers a unique integrated service to the public and to all people affected by cancer. CANSA is a leading role-player in cancer research and the scientific findings and knowledge gained from our research are used to realign our health programmes, as well as strengthen our watchdog role to the greater benefit of the public. Our health programmes comprise health and education campaigns; CANSA Care Centres that offer a wide range of care and support services to those affected by cancer; stoma and other clinical support; medical equipment hire, as well as a toll-free line to offer information and support. We offer a Tele Counselling service in seven languages free of charge. We also supply patient care and support in the form of 11 CANSA Care Homes in the main metropolitan areas for out-of-town cancer patients and CANSA-TLC lodging for parents and guardians of children undergoing cancer treatment.

Queries CANSA

Visit www.cansa.org.za or contact the nearest CANSA Care Centre, call CANSA toll-free 0800 22 66 22 or email: info@cansa.org.za. In addition to online resources and Facebook support groups, CANSA offers multi-lingual support on WhatsApp: 072 197 9305 for English and Afrikaans and 071 867 3530 for isiXhosa, isiZulu, siSwati, Sesotho and Setswana and free Tele Counselling per appointment on 0800 22 66 22 in English, Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, siSwati, Sesotho and Setswana. Follow CANSA on Facebook:
CANSA The Cancer Association of South Africa, Twitter: @CANSA (http://www.twitter.com/CANSA), Instagram @cancerassociationofsouthafrica, LinkedIn and Pinterest.