Deepa Muthiah, chairman, Dean Foundation announced the setting up of Palliative
Care Centre at the Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children, Egmore. A
palliative care centre for children from socially and economically weak
backgrounds suffering from terminal illnesses will be functional at the Institute of Child Health and Hospital for Children, Egmore.
It is an initiative of Dean Foundation. The new unit will have specialists in palliative
care nursing the children and helping them manage their pain medically; and further
following up with home visits, once the child is discharged. Deepa Muthiah said
that there are Palliative care programmes exist worldwide for adults, integrated
paediatric pain and palliative care services for Children are rare. . In response to a critical need to move
beyond the disease oriented, hospital-based model with a lack of continuity
between hospital and community-based medical services, the Dean Foundation
developed an innovative program of advanced care planning and care
coordination.
The first step is the establishment of an Out Patient and In Patient
unit in the space provided by the Institute
of Child Health, Egmore.
Beginning with five beds, the Centre hopes to augment the capacity based on the
demand from patients and flow of philanthropic support.
Krishnan Swaminathan,
endocrinologist based in Scotland,
is one of the funders for the project. His organisation, Idhayangal, co-founded
with three other Indian doctors who passed out of Madras
Medical College,
now in the United Kingdom,
has set aside 5000 Pound Sterling
for the Paediatric Palliative Care Centre at ICH.
The Principal Secretary, Health, V. K. Subburaj, says, “This is a
first-of-its-kind service being provided in a paediatric hospital, certainly
the first within a government hospital in Tamil Nadu. It is a great first step
and we hope to follow up on that.”
