‘Palliative care cuts cost by 20%’
Pained by the loss of precious lives in Oman road accidents, new ORSA chief seeks to add safety lessons in school curricula to make the new generation more law-abiding and responsible citizens
MUSCAT: “There is almost no Omani citizen who has not lost a family member or a friend in a road accident.”
Ali Al Barwani, the new Oman Road Safety Association (ORSA) chief executive officer, is speaking from personal experience.
The new CEO lost his nephew in a traffic accident.
“I feel bad when I see his orphaned daughter now,” he said, and added that every road death leaves behind a tragedy.
Al Barwani also buried two of his neighbours who lost their lives on Oman’s roads in the same way.
Despite that, he is optimistic that Oman can overcome its hor- rific road record - using education as his weapon of choice.
“We are keen on adding road safety lessons to schools’ curricula so children will learn about their rights and responsibilities on the road,” he explained.
He said that it was sad to see buses and cars parking dangerously on the stretch of Bausher road that is packed with educational institutions.
ORSA is working closely with public, private and international schools to educate students about road safety, according to Al Barwani.
“When you tell someone that a person has died, the automatic reply is ‘Was he involved in an accident?’. Until this response changes in Oman, I believe this issue will remain a matter of con- cern,” Al Barwani said.
However, Al Barwani has all the right to be optimistic as the Sultanate reported considerably fewer road accidents in the first half of 2016, with cases plunging 37 per cent to 2,100, as against 3,334 traffic accidents during the same period last year.
While serious education is a long-term plan, Al Barwani revealed some of ORSA’s shortterm ones.
“We will invite victims who survived dangerous traffic accidents to talk to younger drivers via social media,” he said, and added that ORSA will also have continuous safety campaigns.
“I am happy to be appointed to this position and I believe there is so much space for improvement,” Al Barwani said.
The new CEO has experience with the oil and gas industry where his career started as an engineer in Oman LNG’s $2 billion project in Sur. MUSCAT: Improved palliative care could help reduce medical costs by as much as 20 per cent, according to a senior consultant.
Palliative care is specialised care for people with serious, long term illness. It focuses on providing patients with relief and is usually organised at patient’s own home. Also known as end of life care, it is seen by many medical experts worldwide as the global standard for end of life care.
“Generally, you end up with patients receiving unnecessary treatment, which costs money. Yes, palliative care requires more manpower, but everywhere in the world where palliative care has been implemented, there were reduction in costs by about 20 per cent in total budgets.
“You’re employing more people, but the patient is going less often to the hospital and symp- toms are controlled, so there are fewer problems and fewer admissions to the ICU, there are also fewer unnecessary end of life treatments. Giving someone chemotherapy one week before they die is not right,” said Dr. Zahid Al Mandhari, Senior Consultant at the Oncology Department of the Royal Hospital.
To encourage the use of palliative care, more medical professionals in Oman are being trained to offer quality help at home, as the country moves towards a more systematic palliative care structure.
Some 56 patients received palliative care last year,while 180 nurses have been trained across Muscat to offer palliative care services at home.