Anyone who has worked in the field of palliative care in India, even for a short while, must have heard of Ms Gilly Burn, Palliative Care nurse from the UK, Founder Director, Cancer Relief India, and a dear friend of palliative care in India.

Gilly has been acknowledged internationally as an inspirational clinical role model, palliative care advocate and for her dynamic, charismatic teaching. In the 1980s, Gilly travelled the length and breadth of India, introducing palliative care, finding pioneers, getting them trained and empowering them for palliative care. She continues to visit and support the activities of the Indian palliative care community.

In 2023, she travelled across India from January to March, spreading awareness on palliative care over 47 institutes, covering 12,000+ kilometres! 87+ energetic hours of sessions on the basics of palliative care, palliative care nursing, art of gentle dying, breaking bad news etc…

Read: The Art of Gentle Dying

This time Pallium India’s stakeholders were able to arrange a meeting with the Governor of Odisha as well as the Health Minister and Health Secretary of Chhattisgarh (Image). She reached out to 47 institutes which spread across three regions, 24 in South, 19 in Central and 4 in North region.

There are some of the takeaways that the stakeholders promised after attending her sessions:

• Focus more on care of patients
• Provide comfortable pillows for patients
• Sit and talk to patients
• Listen to patients
• Place stools by the side of each patient
• Have more one on one interactions with patients
• More effective approach to palliative care.

The National Coordinator of Pallium India’s State Facilitation Team, Ms Arathy Nair, co-ordinated the entire trip of Ms Gilly Burn, along with the Regional Coordinators of the respective regions, Mr. Lalit (South), Ms. Sunanda (Central) and Mr. Rajendra (North).