Facilitation Team at IAPCON 2023
State Facilitation team members with other attendees from Pallium India at IAPCON 2023
Ron Sangma, Regional Coordinator NE – State Facilitation, writes:
The theme of Indian Association of Palliative Care Conference (IAPCON 2023) held at Bengaluru, Karnataka, on 10-12 February 2023 was “Metamorphosis: The Emergence of Subspeciality Palliative Medicine”. It was a three-day workshop designed to raise awareness and further enhance palliative care to integrate in other medical speciality, with the inclusion of technology. A vivid example we heard from the speaker on the emergence and transformative advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) that may have the potential to help us accelerate our progress towards the work we do in palliative care and eventually augment our success but the stakes are high too. The use of AI tool comes with risks and potential for harm. AI to be used responsibly.
The last conference I had attended in person was in 2020. So I felt it was the right moment and a great platform for the facilitation team to attend the sessions talk and meet the palliative care advocates and practitioners coming from across the globe. Indeed great learning, good connects and more new opportunities for the facilitation team to further take the cause of palliative care to our respective region.
The Facilitation team was created basically to integrate palliative care into mainstream healthcare by –
i) Catalyzing new palliative care centres and services.
ii) Assist in opioid accessibility in all regions and medical institutes.
iii) Enable palliative care learning in medical institutes.
iv) Build up community engagement & volunteer mobilization.
v) Develop pain free hospitals by eliminating serious health related sufferings.
Tragically, still thousands or more in need of palliative care suffer silently for the crisis in quality of life services in our country. So I feel this conference was very important for the team and taught us again to “educate, question, challenge, re-educate, re-question, re-challenge”. This is an experience that I find gratifying along with my visit to HO Pallium India Kerala on the next day of the conference end.
Let’s continue to keep our voice strong as we work together to ensure availability of palliative care services in all regions and country.