Two government hospitals in Jammu and Kashmir are among the top 10 institutions chosen by AIIMS New Delhi for a research project to extend palliative care to patients with chronic debilitating conditions, officials said.
Government Hospital, Gandhinagar, in Jammu and Government Medical College (GMC) in Srinagar are among the 10 centres in north India that have already been developed for providing palliative care. They have now been selected to handhold 100 district hospitals in providing similar services, the officials said.
“This project aims at establishing and developing palliative care services at grassroots in the northern part of India through capacity building approach and utilising it for malignant and non-malignant diseases and to reduce patient suffering and cost of care,” a senior doctor at the Gandhinagar hospital said.
These hospitals will be provided with state-of-the-art advanced training in terms of confidence building, leadership qualities, and advanced palliative education for providing, pain palliative and supportive care services to terminally sick patients, he said.
“The Government Hospital, Gandhinagar, is the first hospital in Jammu and Kashmir to provide pain and palliative care services and the staff is trained by AIIMS New Delhi in collaboration with Asian Pacific Palliative and Hospice Network Singapore and Indian Association of Palliative care,” Head of Pain and Palliative care unit and clinic, Dr Rohit Lahori said.
He said the hospital has a dedicated 10-bedded palliative and geriatric care ward with all modern equipment for providing these services.
The Directorate of Health Services, Jammu, is training two medical officers and two staff nurses from each district of Jammu in providing palliative care services at all the district hospitals in the Jammu division under the National Programme for Palliative Care (NPPC) programme so that patients need not travel long distances to avail these services, he said.
Dr Lahori said phase-I of the training has already been completed in collaboration with AIIMS New Delhi and the Indian Association of Palliative Care.
The phase-II clinical training programme is currently underway batchwise at the Gandhinagar hospital.
“Jammu and Kashmir are the first in India to provide these services in one go in all the district hospitals after the recent inauguration of Palliative and Geriatric Care ward at all district hospitals,” he said.
Dr Lahori was awarded with the International Award for Low Cost Treatment for Interventional Pain Management last year.