The Hindu : Kerala News : Local bodies told to enhance palliative care facilities

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Kerala

Local bodies told to enhance palliative care facilities

Staff Reporter

Creating awareness: Participants at a State-level seminar on palliative care at Areekode in Malappuram district on Sunday.

MALAPPURAM: A State-level seminar on palliative care held at Areekode in the district on Sunday called upon local bodies to give increased priority to palliative care.

P.K. Abdu Rabb, MLA, inaugurated the seminar organised jointly by the district panchayat, Malappuram Initiative in Palliative Care, and Areekode Palliative Care Association.

Local Self-Government Department Principal Secretary S.M. Vijayanand delivered the keynote address.

District panchayat president Arimbra Mohammed presided over the seminar, which focused on ‘palliative care under local bodies.’

The seminar stressed the importance of reaching out with palliative care to terminally and chronically ill patients at their homes. Initiatives under the leadership of civic bodies can offer palliative care to patients more effectively than anyone else, the seminar pointed out.

Citing the Malappuram Initiative as model in palliative care, the seminar exhorted the civic representatives to take initiative to spot terminally ill patients first and then reach out to them with the medicine and care as well as to give palliative care training to the public.

About 500 representatives from civic bodies across the State took part in the seminar, which was a precursor to an international palliative care workshop to be held at Manjeri in the first week of February.

The seminar reviewed the projects being implemented by the State’s local bodies in health sector.

Salim Kuruvambalam, Malappuram district panchayat standing committee chairman; K. Vijayan, district panchayat secretary; Suresh Kumar, director of the Institute of Palliative Medicine; and Anil Paleri, Indian Association of Palliative Care secretary, spoke.

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