From the Chairman

Welcome from Anil Tandon

Greetings and welcome to the new format of the APLI newsletter. The way society operates and the way we all like to receive information has changed greatly in the space of just a few years. When APLI was founded in 1996, the newsletter was printed and mailed out in hard copy. Initially this was done in-house, and then Liz Bearzatto kindly produced this until 2014 when we engaged the services of Moonshine Agency to assist with its publication. At around that time we moved towards the more cost-efficient and environmentally-friendly soft copy sent to you by email. 

This latest version of our newsletter will hopefully build on these improvements. We think the online format not only looks great, giving us the opportunity to showcase not just in words but in pictures the work that our members are doing, but enables you to read it in the format of your choice – desktop, tablet or smartphone – and share it with your friends and colleagues on whichever social media platform. We sincerely thank the team at Moonshine for their help over the last few years, and once again are grateful to Rebecca Mander and Angela Hollins from Menarini Australia who have very kindly provided us with an unrestricted grant to enable us to bring this newsletter to you.

In the spirit of this fresh start, I would also like to take this opportunity to talk about our name. We are no different from anyone else in wanting to capitalise on the benefit of a well-chosen acronym, especially when Australasian Palliative Link International is such a mouthful. The trick for us is to help our partners with the pronunciation of APLI – in going about my work I have noticed some confusion with this, the most common (incorrect) variation being ‘App-lee’. The intended and correct pronunciation is ‘Apply’ as this aligns us nicely to one of the definitions of the word: ‘to devote one’s energy to; to give or devote assiduously to’. 

On reading the pages that follow, I hope you will see examples of people applying themselves to the development of palliative care in our region.

Best wishes and thanks for your support,

Anil Tandon