Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

State formulates new palliative care policy

Thiruvananthapuram: At a time when there is no national policy on palliative care, Kerala has become the first State in the country to formulate and accept a pain and palliative care policy which aims at establishing palliative care services across the State and integrating these into the public health care system.

While this is a commendable step forward, no specific budget allocation has been made by the government for implementing this project. Voluntary organisations and local-self governments are expected to run the programme. However, including pain and palliative care services within the framework of the National Rural Health Mission might be the way out.

The policy has been formulated on the basis of a project report submitted to the State government by Pallium India in 2005.

Palliative care is aimed at improving the quality of life of patients with incurable or chronic diseases, by treating the pain as well as offering social, emotional and spiritual support.

At present, there are about 100 centres run by various voluntary organisations, offering palliative care services in Kerala and around 4,000 trained volunteers.

The short-term objective of the policy is to train at least 300 volunteers in palliative care in every district and train at least 200 doctors and nurses each across the State in the next two years.

It also aims at establishing a palliative care service with supply of essential drugs including oral morphine and at least one trained doctor and nurse in all government medical college hospitals.

The long-term objective of the policy aims at ensuring the presence of 1,000 active volunteers trained in palliative care in each district.

Developing four more training centres in the State for advanced training in palliative medicine and nursing, incorporating palliative care modules in medical, dental, nursing, pharmacy and paramedical courses and integrating delivery of palliative care services into the activities of field-level health workers are also planned.

The policy also spells out that the medicines commonly needed for palliative care be included in the essential drug list of government hospitals and that there should be clear guidelines for procuring, storing and dispensing medicines needing special licence, like morphine.

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