Published on: August 8, 2017

You may remember that in 2016, government of India put up on its website the draft of an end of life care law. A major problem that we all identified in the draft law was the confusion over meaning of terms, particularly euthanasia being confused with withholding or withdrawing artificial life support.

During the last International conference of medical ethics at Pune, we requested Dr Soumya Viswanathan, the President of ICMR, to come out with official terminology and definitions on the subject. Obviously realizing the importance of the matter, she immediately agreed and entrusted work with Dr Roli Mathur.

A working group created for the purpose with the chairman of Pallium India as the coordinator and stalwarts from the Indian Society of critical care medicine, Indian Academy of neurology and Indian Association of palliative care taking the lead, has created the document which is now on the ICMR website. We must particularly recognize the phenomenal contribution by Dr Naveen Salins who did the lion’s share of the work in creating the draft document.

The document can be seen in http://www.icmr.nic.in/icmrnews/comments_palliative.htm

Link to download PDF: Definitions of terms used in limitation of treatment and providing palliative care at end of life

Thank you Dr Soumya Viswanathan, Dr Roli Mathur, Dr Raj Mani, Dr Roop Gursahani, Dr Naveen Salins and many others for making this happen. And thank you Karunashraya Hospice for hosting the working group meetings.