Dr. MR Rajagopal is a palliative care physician by profession and the founder of Pallium India, a palliative care NGO based in Kerala. He is more popularly known as the father of palliative care in India and was honoured with Padma Shri award in 2018. He has worked tirelessly since 1993 to integrate palliative care across medical institutions. His advocacy contributed to the amendment of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act of India in 2014 – a critical step allowing millions to access pain relief and reduce needless suffering. He made major contributions in the creation of the National Program for Palliative Care (NPPC) in India. He is a major global force behind efforts to promote and put into practise the right of patients with severe pain to live and die with dignity.
In his talk at TEDxBITSPILANI 2020 event, he talks about how healthcare is everybody’s business and medical staff alone cannot provide healthcare to people and it is not an easy task to bring community and medical staff together because of our present healthcare system. Millions of people in our country are victims of catastrophic health expenditures. Paying for treatments and other related services pushes them into poverty, forces children to drop out, lose their jobs and fall into a vicious circle. He shares two such experiences one with a poor family and one with the rich to highlight the fact that all sections of society are equally hit by this. The poor are often left to die and the rich are tormented in isolation wards in the name of treatment. The overburden of the system cannot be reduced until medical staff and we recognize the significant role of community in healthcare. He stresses on the fact that how compassionate and responsible members of the society can come together and help patients suffering with incurable disease, counsel them and their families and prepare them for life beyond diseases and at a cost which is much less than the hospital bills, after all every human being deserves to die with dignity. This model has been implemented by his team in parts of Kerala and has received an encouraging response. Communities can provide emotional support and practical help to patients and their families which often the medical staff fails to provide. He also states the fact that healthcare for all cannot be achieved without healthcare by all. Community participation plays an indispensable role in connecting lay men to the ever-growing hospitals of the country. He ends his talk with a self-introspection question, what is the meaning of life and encourages everybody to be more sensitized and contribute to healthcare by all. Dr M.R. Rajagopal, aptly called by The New York Times as ‘the father of palliative healthcare in India’, is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and a Padma Shree awardee. Palliative healthcare can be best defined as the act of caring for critically ill patients or caring for patients with complex diseases. Dr. Rajagopal is the director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Policy and Training on access to pain relief and also the founder of Pallium India, an organization that advocates death with dignity as the right of patients. He has also been featured in the 2017, Australian-made documentary ‘Hippocratic’ telling his remarkable life story. His advocacy has sparked a debate, especially on the front of giving universal access to morphine- a heavily restricted, narcotic pain medicine which has the power to revolutionize palliative medicine This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
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http://inktalks.com Understanding and giving palliative care along with the right medication is essential for holistic treatment. Listen in as Dr M R Rajagopal shares why this becomes even more critical in times of Covid – where the doctor has to step in not just to treat the disease but also the anxiety of the patient being treated in quarantine, away from family – and what Pallium India is doing to make a difference.

This conversation is a recording of our current Instagram LIVE series ‘Let’s Fight Covid-19 Together’, where we get up, close and personal with the Covid Consultative Group (CCG) and get the latest, expert updates on the pandemic in India. Tune in to @inktalks at 7pm IST to join us!

ABOUT DR M R RAJAGOPAL: A person’s right to be treated, not merely as a unidimensional patient suffering with a life-altering disease, but as a human being with multiple dimensions that determine her or his quality of life, lies at the heart of Dr Rajagopal’s work on Palliative Care. Dr Rajagopal believed in the need for a more holistic approach to caregiving for those who have been diagnosed as terminally ill. Pallium India, a charitable trust set up by him embraces the entire ecosystem of illness – pain, distress, discomfort, the loss of dignity – for the patient and for those who are closely connected with her or him. Dr Rajagopal’s work with the WHO Collaborating Center at Pain and Policy Studies Group (PPSG) in Madison-Wisconsin involved withdrawing regulatory barriers in availability of opioids for pain relief in India. This collaborative work resulted in the Government of India asking all its State Governments to bring in an amendment in narcotic regulations. Implementation of this needs State by State advocacy and opioid availability workshops. In recognition of the yeomen service to the field of palliative medicine, Dr Rajagopal was awarded a Padma Shree in 2018. He was also identified as one of the 30 most influential leaders in hospice and palliative medicine by the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

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