The CIS LONDON team has recently completed registration of the Foundation for Palliative Care Education (PACED) as a charity in the UK, through the Charity Commission. This charitable organization is conceived to provide systematic support to professionals in the field of palliative care and related areas, in regions where palliative and hospice care are underdeveloped.

It was an honour for us to provide assistance to the PACED trustees, who include:

• Dr Robert Twycross – professor of Oxford University, one of the pioneers of hospice and palliative medicine in UK. Founder member of the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP); The Association of Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland; the European Association for Palliative Care; and the Palliative Care Research Society (UK).

• Nyuta Federmesser – founder of the VERA Hospice Charity Fund, the only Russian non-profit organisation that provides support to hospices and their patients, and a director of the Moscow Centre for Palliative Medicine.

• Dmitry Yampolskiy – successful Russian advocate with years of experience in pro bono work and a Chairman of the Board at the VERA Hospice Charity Fund.

PACED aims to improve the availability of relevant information for professionals in the field of palliative care; to help create technologies for the application of this knowledge; and to ultimately equalize the standards of palliative care across the world.

Registration of PACED in the UK, with the support of CIS LONDON, is the first step towards raising the level of palliative care to an international standard in the CIS countries and other regions of the world where palliative is in the initial stages of development.