Poor cancer patients in Odisha to get care at home

Patients afflicted by the dreaded disease cancer require a lot of care and support and not everyone can afford it. Now Bagchi-Karunashraya Palliative Care Centre in Bhubaneswar, Odisha has decided to collaborate with local non-government organisations to provide support in terms of finance and education to patients and caregivers from economically backward sections.

The Centre is a collaborative effort between Bangalore Hospice Trust: Karunashraya and co-founder of Mindtree Subroto Bagchi.

The Managing Trustee of BHTK Gurmeet Singh Randhawa informed that there were many cancer patients who were unable to avail of proper support and care especially during the end of life in Odisha. The reason being home-based palliative care service is not available.

Sharing details about the initiative he said: “The Bagchi-Karunashraya home care team aims to alleviate this suffering both for the patient and caregiver and provide the necessary support at home. We aim to collaborate with NGOs and train the volunteers about palliative care so that patients from weaker sections of the society can get care at their doorsteps.”

To spread awareness about palliative care, the Trust has organised several training programmes for doctors, nurses, and other health professionals. In the last one year, three batches of Government doctors and nurses have been introduced to palliative care.

Over the last one year, the Centre has provided homecare and OPD services to 600 patients. The free home care service started last year has catered to the needs of 307 patients over 1,380 home visits.  For this, local doctors, nurses, counsellors and medical assistants have been recruited and trained.

This year in March the Centre started a weekly OPD service for patients too.