About Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN)

The Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network (APHN) was established to empower and support
individuals and organisations in the region to alleviate suffering from life-threatening illnesses.
Initiated by Dr Shigeaki Hinohara, Chairman of the Life Planning Centre in Tokyo, Japan, a series of
meetings took place from March 1995 to early 2001, brining leaders in palliative care from around the
region to discuss and set up a regional network. On March 1, 2001, APHN was officially registered in
Singapore and later achieved charity status.
APHN’s mission is to promote access to quality hospice palliative care for all in the Asia Pacific
region. APHN members include some 230 organisations that support or provide palliative care and
over 1,600 individuals working in the field in the Asia Pacific region. The 15 current sectors of the
APHN are Australia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar,
New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. A Sector is a geographic region
which may include one or more countries, or part of a country.
A major knowledge-sharing event that APHN initiated is the bi-annual Asia-Pacific Hospice
Palliative Care Conference (APHC). Working hand-in-hand with the host countries, APHN ensure
each Conference attains a high professional standard bringing the latest development and news of the
filed to all participants. Some other work we do include promoting education and skills development,
enhancing awareness and communication, and fosters research and collaboration. We encourage
established programmes to assist less experienced and more isolated colleagues. Our latest project is
the Lien Collaborative for Palliative Care, which aims to help build Palliative Care capacity in the
Asia Pacific region and to integrate this with the mainstream government health system. Its focus is
on countries with little or no services. For more information, please visit www.aphn.org