From the President’s Desk

Dear Friends,

Dr. Sushma Bhatnagar

I wish each of you a very happy and a prosperous new year!

As the world awakens to a new dawn, a new beginning filled with renewed hope and resolution, we at the IAPC, are committed to taking forward the aim of IAPC, to ensure access to palliative care, for all who need it!

For this, the IAPC is working on a multi-pronged approach by focusing its activities around the domains of Education, Policy, and Drug Availability.

Taking stock of the activities from the calendar year, is a common practice at the end of each year. Looking back, I can proudly say that, IAPC had a year filled with activities! 

On behalf of the IAPC, I would like to thank all the IAPC Members, our Faculty, and the members of the IAPC’s Central Council committee for their constant support. I would also like to also thank the Team of the Indian Journal of Palliative Care (IJPC) for bringing out such excellent editions over this past year.

I would like to express our deepest gratitude to Cipla Foundation for their financial support towards supporting the IAPC’s Secretariat. I would like to also extend our sincere gratitude to TCS iON for developing and maintaining the online examination platform for the IAPC’s Certificate Course in Essentials of Palliative Care, at no cost to the IAPC.

I express my warm gratitude to Team Shankar Mahadevan Academy Nirvana for our successful musical collaboration, ‘Singing for the Stars’, which allows us to present our patients, their caregivers and our health care community with monthly, free, online evening of harmonies. The project aimed  to and did bring smiles to the lives of our ‘Real Stars’, members of our community.

While I do not intend to enlist here all the activities the IAPC had undertaken in 2022, yet, I would like to mention a few.

The Academy of Palliative Medicine, was established on 1st May 2022, and was a key milestone we achieved towards the development of Palliative Care Education and Research in India. Over the year, the Academy is slowly yet steadily spreading its wings to pave the way towards achieving academic excellence in Palliative Medicine.

In the past year, the IAPC had organised training programs to train various cadres of health care professionals and volunteers in Palliative Care.

The IAPC Academy Lecture Series, launched with an aim to provide online training sessions for young palliative care physicians, especially for Post Graduate students in Palliative Medicine (MD & DNB), delivered a total of 48 lectures in 2022.

In March 2022, the IAPC also collaborated with the NHM (Jammu and Kashmir) and successfully organised a palliative care training program for the Government Medical Officers, and Nurses from Jammu and Ladakh. 

The IAPC had also organised three interesting webinars as part of its advocacy activities, to celebrate special observances during the year.

A very important pilot survey to assess the current barriers to pain relief and opioid access in India, was conducted by the IAPC in July 2022. The results of the findings are now being disseminated with the concerned stakeholders to address the issues identified.

The IAPC is currently conducting a survey on Ethics Education to further strengthen the IAPC’s capacity in the area of palliative care ethics.

The IAPC also launched several campaigns and new webpages in 2022. Please visit the Career Page and other special pages such as ‘Stories of Healing’, WHPCD celebration page, Doctor’s Day Page, Nurses Day page. Etc.

We request you all to follow IAPC on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin to stay connected!

The year 2023 for the IAPC begins with a volunteer training program at Odisha and with the January’s online batch of IAPC’s Certificate Course in Essentials of Palliative Care. 52 course centres from across the country will now help our Doctors and Nurses to get trained in the basics of palliative care.

The January issue of the IAPC’s newsletter includes several important announcements and updates. I invite you all to read the newsletter for further details.

The contributors for the IAPC’s exclusive articles featured in this month’s ‘Interesting reads’ section are:  

Thank you, Dr Sreedevi, Dr Ashita and Dr Krithika for sharing these excellent articles with us.

Finally, I am so excited to meet you all in-person in Bengaluru, at the much-anticipated academic feast, the 30th Annual International Conference of the Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPCON 2023). Please do register (in case you haven’t already) and join us for the conference in February 2023. 

Till then, Take care, and once again, A very happy New Year!

Warm regards,

Dr. Sushma Bhatnagar
President, IAPC