The article, “Till the end…”, describes the efforts that the palliative care leaders, Dr M.A Muckaden, Dr Manjhiri Dighe and others are making to bring in a palliative care policy in the state and also to improve palliative care education to professionals.

The Maharashtra Health Minister, Suresh Shetty, responds:

The decision of a policy has to be taken by the Medical Education department.

As far as making palliative care a compulsory part of the medical curriculum is concerned, we have forwarded it to the Directorate of Medical Education in Nashik.

The decision has to come from there.

A lot more advocacy is needed, obviously!

The Guatemalan Government published yesterday in the official newspaper Diario de Centroamerica the Agreement of Constitution of the National Commission of Palliative Care of Guatemala, with a wide representative body of institutions.

For us, it is definitely the best gift to start the year!

Our Government will change on January 14th, and we are so glad that they decided establish this Ministry Agreement so we can continue to work with the new team.

The topic was Palliative Care and Advance Health Care Directives for the US based South Asian population.

Quite a lot of people expressed interest with two pages of our guestbook filled with names of people who want to know more about Pallium India – many of them want to consider volunteering.

Many thanks, you wonderful people. Expect an email from us soon!

photo credit: Juan Rubiano

Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva, presented a speech at the UN Human Rights Council.

He focused largely on the need to ensure universal access to medicines.  He highlighted the role of poverty in developing countries, and noted that children are particularly deprived of access to medicines.

The Catholic Church provides a major contribution to health care in all parts of the world – through local churches, religious institutions and private initiatives, which act on their own responsibility and in the respect of the law of each country – including the promotion of 5,378 hospitals, 18,088 dispensaries and clinics, 521 leprosaria, and 15,448 homes for the aged, the chronically ill, or disabled people.

Read more at Fides.org…

Conveying powerful messages about untreated pain and about end-of-life decisions. Very very powerful.

Of course it is all about USA.

So when you have finished watching it, please give yourself a minute to think about 80% of the world – the developing world.

What sort of torture goes on there?