A TRIDENT is a potent weapon with three prongs! Dr Keshav Pandey, Dr Akram Lal and Dr M T Bhatia together make a medical Trident! They had three powers; Anaesthesia, Pain Management and Palliation. And they utilised these talents in developing three medical associations in India; ISA, ISSP and IAPC. Factually speaking, they became instrumental in founding the ISSP and the IAPC, not only that; they nurtured it too well!
I became curious about Palliative Care way back in late 1980s, familiarized by attending an IAPCON at Kozhikode in 1998 along with Dr M T Bhatia and became active after 2005. This is the subject which is at my heart and I have heard many stories about the IAPC from Dr Bhatia. These three people contributed immensely in the first decade of the IAPC; Dr Rajgopal also joined later. Dr Akram Lal served in the Editorial Board of IJPC till 2001. They formulated various training programmes to spread the knowledge of Palliative Care among doctors, nurses, and others. The IAPC is really indebted to them for their herculean efforts in giving an excellent start to this new branch of medicines in India. Here is the picture of Dr Akram Lal speaking at the second IAPCON at Ahmedabad in 1995.
The sad demise of Dr Akram Lal is a great loss to the IAPC; we lost one more pioneer. However, it is a matter of great satisfaction that a huge infrastructure of the IAPC has come up on the foundation which they created. Let us build it further: that will be a rightful tribute to Dr Akram Lal.