Alpha Palliative Care Kasaragod

Alpha Palliative Care is a community based non-governmental organization(NGO) dedicated to palliative care since 2005.The goal of palliative care is to ease pain and to help control symptoms and provide comfort, so that patients maintain the easiest possible way of life. Palliative care can help patients who are diagnosed with such conditions as advanced heart disease, cancer, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, ALS or multiple sclerosis.

The Alpha Palliative Care is a not-for-profit organization that works to relieve patients suffering from incurable diseases and afflictions; and improve their quality of life. We provide holistic support to patients dealing with life-threatening illness by providing medical services as well as psychological, social, practical, and spiritual support within the family and home environment. We are committed to developing palliative care and ensuring that it becomes integrated into our healthcare system. With a team of 62 doctors, nurses and other para-medical and non-medical staff; Alpha Palliative Care has been on a strong yet resilient journey to bring pain, healing and comfort to the needy anywhere in the world.

Palliative care is aimed at helping patients live as actively as possible. Palliative care treats people suffering from serious and chronic illnesses such as cancer, cardiac disease such as congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), kidney failure, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, AIDS and many more. It helps alleviate the symptoms and side effects of the disease, in addition to the related psychological, social, and spiritual problems. It also takes into consideration, a support system to sustain and rehabilitate the individual’s family.

Long Term Care, a vital part of palliative care is required by people who are permanently bedridden or have restricted mobility, due to either sickness or injury. These conditions include paraplegia, quadriplegia, cerebral palsy, cerebral vascular diseases and other neurological problems. Long Term Care is also required for mentally challenged individuals and those who are dependent on other people due to either old age or disease.

In addition to the above, family support measures are an integral feature of palliative care. Continuous education of children of ill-fated patients, women empowerment through Self Help Groups (SHG) and self employment projects, marriage assistance to unwed members of the family, assistance for house repair etc, are all critical aspects of palliative care! These measures assume paramount significance when the patient happens to be the bread-winner of the family.

According to the demographics of Kerala, the average population in a panchayath being 20,000, 20 people (1 in 1000) are expected to have incurable conditions of cancer at any given time. Twice that many people, could be suffering from other life-threatening diseases. An equal number of people with restricted mobility needing Long Term Care is estimated. As the life expectancy of the population increases, the ageing population needing palliative care also increases. Therefore it can be assumed that up to 1% of the population requires palliative care.

Palliative care is total active care of patients with life limiting diseases, which needs a multidisciplinary team with shared goals and vision. Existing health care system in India is grossly inadequate to address the needs of patients suffering from incurable conditions of diseases such as cancer and pain associated with it, and people bed-ridden due to accidents and illnesses, and care of terminally ill patients at home. Holistic approach in palliative care needs a team to alleviate the suffering, which has physical, psychological, social and spiritual dimensions. It needs a lot of human and material resources to achieve these basic elements of care.

In Kerala, NGOs and local self governing institutions using Public Health Centres (PHC) are doing a lot in palliative care but quality of these services are questionable in many cases, despite their noble intentions, due to lack of trained healthcare professionals and their full time non-availability in most centres. Out-of-hour services are not available and most of the clinics run by the NGOs are part time clinics. 24x7 services are a must to deliver quality palliative care and care should be delivered when the patient needs it, not when convenient to the provider.

Our vast experience in community based palliative care revealed weaknesses in our present system, which led us to think of innovative ideas to develop community-based care centers.

Community based rehabilitation centers are non-existent in our healthcare scenario and people suffering from such conditions are forced to rely on tertiary care hospitals for their primary needs like physiotherapy, catheter change, dressings etc. Lack of trained and qualified nurses in our community necessitates multiple hospital admission for minor problems like constipation, Ryle’s tube insertion etc. In addition, there is no support system for families and dependants of patients in terms of the psycho-social, emotional and financial issues they face.