Explained | Revised NCD guidelines skip focus on palliative care
India is home to nearly 20% of the world’s population, two-thirds of which reside in rural areas. However, palliative care aims to improve the quality of life by addressing the physical, psychological, spiritual, and social domains of the health of people suffering from life-limiting diseases like heart failure, kidney failure, certain neurological diseases, cancer, etc. Since most patients who need palliative care are suffering from debilitating diseases, home-based care forms the ideal mode of healthcare delivery. Despite various other vertical government programmes with palliative care provision as one of their objectives, like the National Programme for Healthcare of Elderly, access to palliative care continues to be abysmal. The World Health Organisation recommends the use of morphine consumption per capita to assess morphine access for palliative care services.
62% of elderly in India lack long-term, palliative care, reveals survey for UN
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