Published on: March 7, 2025

It is heartening to see the development of palliative care across Indian states. Karnataka is taking significant steps for the same. Thanks to the initiative of Ms Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta, Additional Chief Secretary (Panchayat Raj) in Department of Rural Development & Panchayat Raj, Govt of Karnataka, a team of officials, doctors and social activists visited Trivandrum to spend time with us in Pallium India. Sustained activities followed – a hybrid meeting on 18 February 2025 with plans to move forward in several areas including the status of implementation of the status of NDPS amendment rules of 2015, of the recent supreme court judgement of end-of-life care and living will of 2023 and moving forward with the draft policy which was already drafted a few years back. We look forward to exciting development in the near future.

M R Rajagopal MD Chairman Emeritus, Pallium India
(Adjunct Professor of Global Oncology, Queen’s University, Canada)