Published on: February 25, 2014

This year, the annual conference of the Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC) was held at Bhubaneswar, Orissa. IAPC Conferences have always been influential in development of palliative care in the country, permitting exchange of information and learning. This is the one time in the year when most people in the field get together.

Year by year, the IAPC Conferences have been improving in content and this year was no exception. Good pre-conference workshops, informative plenary lectures and free papers which told the audience about what was happening in the field, elsewhere in the country.

The talk by Dr Nandini Vallath, Pallium India’s consultant, on the history of opium and the NDPS Act in the country, stood out in originality of contents. She traced the history from the British days when opium was a major source of income, albeit an evil influence. She described how it came to be regarded with fear and how it caused the pendulum to shift in the opposite direction, so that medical use also became next to impossible.

The debate on “Is palliative medicine a threat to the corporate world of medicine and specialist physician?” was again exciting and much appreciated. You can read about it on ehospice.

Congratulations to Dr Sukdev Nayak and the rest of the organizing team.