Organised by the Perak Palliative Care Society (PPCS), the first ever Hospice Run 2018 was held on Sunday, October 14 at the Polo Ground. The 5km charity run was flagged off at 7am by guest of honour, Dr Lee Boon Chye, Deputy Minister of Health. Meanwhile, the state government donated RM10,000 to PPCS.
The main objective of the event was to create public awareness on palliative care.
Present were Wong May Ing, the Executive Councillor for Women and Family Development, Character Development and Social Welfare and Dr Koh Wai Keat, President of PPCS.
“For elderly care or palliative care, the state government will put in more efforts to train more medical helpers or professional carers in the coming five years because at the moment Perak has the second highest elderly population in Malaysia. Two years later, Malaysia will also be named an aging nation,” Wong May Ing explained.
“Cancer is one of the top four killers in Malaysia and it has devastating effects for the family. In Ministry of Health, we are focusing on prevention and treatment. The overall treatment of cancer patients involves palliative care. Thus we are supporting PPCS in their efforts to promote awareness in this field. In palliative care, we are not just emphasizing on comfort and pain relief, it also provides psychological social support,” Dr Lee highlighted.
“At the moment, we are located at Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah. Our running costs per month are about RM60,000. We are relocating as the state government has kindly allocated another bigger land along the same road for us to have our new purpose-built building which is estimated to cost approximately RM1 million,” Dr Koh Wai Keat told Ipoh Echo.
PPCS is a non-government, non-profit and nonreligious organisation that provides free palliative care services to patients with life-threatening illness, irrespective of age, race or religion.
Readers who would like to help can donate at PPCS centre (54 Jalan Sultan Azlan Shah, 31400 Ipoh), contact PPCS at 05 546 4732 or make a direct transfer to PPCS Public Bank account: 3096888034.
Mei Kuan
