Pallium India

Dr Jeremy Johnson, 63, from Shrewsbury, has been granted the accolade of MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for services to palliative medicine.

Dr Johnson was one of the original members of staff employed by Severn Hospice in 1989 and retired earlier this year as its medical director.  He and his wife Penny are great friends of Palliative Care in India and have traveled and taught extensively in India.

Congratulations, Jeremy. We are proud to be associated with you.

The Indian Palliative care community is aghast at what can only be described as a calamity  The Government of India has banned Dextropropoxyphene.  The axe has fallen on the least expensive step II opioid available for oral use. Any other step II opioid is five times as expensive. 100 mg of Tramadol four times a day would cost twice the daily income that defines the poverty line. Stringent narcotic regulations restrict the availability of oral morphine to a tiny fraction of the needy. What the average Indian could afford and could get is Dextropropoxyphene. The major argument against it seems to be that westerners use it to attempt suicide. This is hardly relevant for India.

The evidence against Dextropropoxyphene is flimsy. Positive scientific evidence is usually available only in favor of expensive drugs because drug research is costly, because 90% of drug research is funded by the Pharmaceutical industry which has little interest in inexpensive drugs and because it suits the interest of the industry if inexpensive drugs are pushed out of the market.

We should not accept this. We have the duty to present the evidence before the authorities and to seek a solution.

GAZETTE Dextropropoxyphene banned

Related article in ehospice

On Fathers’ day, give a thought to children who lost a dad to disease. Would it not be a privilege to make some of their dreams your own?

The organizing committee of the 21^st International Conference of Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPCON 2014) invites all to Odisha to join for the IAPCON 2014. The conference organized by Acharya Harihar Regional Cancer Centre, Cuttack, will be held at KIMS Campus, Bhubaneswar- the capital of Odisha from 14-16 February 2014.

The theme of the conference is “EVIDENCE-BASED PALLIATIVE MEDICINE”.

Pre-conference workshops will be held on 13^th February 2014.

Address: Organising Secretaries, IAPCCON 2014,  Department Of Anaesthesia, Pain Relief & Palliative Care, AH Regional Cancer Centre, Cuttack 753007, Odisha
Fax No : +91 671 2304683
Email: iapcon2014@gmail.com, ahrccpc@gmail.com

If you go to http://palliumindia.org/2010/12/a-letter-parent-to-parent/ you can read about a mother’s story of pain and love – when her child and she went through many years of suffering. That mother, Dianne Gray has just assumed office as President of Elisabeth Kubler Ross Foundation (http://www.ekrfoundation.org/)

Best wishes to you in your new chair, Dianne, and thank you for all that you are doing for children.