Two J&K govt hospitals chosen for ICMR’s palliative care project
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 develop palliative care services at grassroots in northern part of India through capacity building approach and utilizing it for malignant and non-malignant diseases and to reduce patient suffering and cost of care,” a senior doctor at the Gandhinagar hospital 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 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 Indian Association of Palliative Care.
The phase-II clinical training programme is currently underway batch wise at the Gandhinagar hospital.
“Jammu and Kashmir is 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.
