World Palliative care day: Only one per cent of needy get palliative care

Of the 80 lakh patients who die every year, at least 50 lakh need palliative care, said Dr Rajagopal during a meet organised by the Press Club here in connection with the World Palliative Care Day on Saturday.

Dr Rajagopal, chairman of Pallium India and director of WHO, will be honoured by Human Rights Watch with Dr Alison Des Forges Award for extraordinary activist in November. Dr Rajagopal said that the award money of Rs 6 lakh would go towards the work of Pallium India.

The award has two dinners in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles which will provide an opportunity to inform supporters of Human Rights Watch and others about the access to pain relief in the country.

The major reasons for the absence of palliative care are lack of awareness, lack of palliative care education to doctors and nurses and lack of access to affordable essential medicines, including morphine.

In its ten years of existence, Pallium India, a registered charitable trust, has established ten palliative care centres in north and nine in north-eastern states where there was none before, Dr Rajagopal said.

Pallium India also ran 11 community-based link centres in Thiruvananthapuram district. Trivandrum Institute of Palliative Sciences (TIPS) is a WHO- collaborating centre for training and policy on access to pain relief which has trained 140 doctors, 120 nurses and 35 allied health care professionals and more than 900 volunteers. In 2013, Pallium India had more than 900 volunteers and around 15,000 patient contacts. At any time, there are around 60 paralysed patients under Pallium India, Dr Rajagopal said.