Can you imagine being in excruciating pain from advanced cancer and having no pain killers?

This is the reality for 95% of people with advanced cancer and other illnesses in India. Pallium India is working to change this. It provides much needed palliative care and support to people in India by helping patients directly, training health care staff, families and volunteers and lobbying the government to relax the restrictions on prescribing morphine. I worked with the charity in 1997.
One of the many they have helped is a 70 year old man who had been suffering relentless pain for several months from his throat cancer who had spent every night in sleepless anguish. His wife felt incredibly guilty as she had stopped him from jumping out of a hospital window, which he saw as the only way to end his suffering. He then went to an out reach clinic run by Pallium India and was given morphine. Within an hour he was free of pain. He said 'If such pain relief is possible why was it denied to me for all these months?' So many patients in India are still suffering from such intractable pain.
Patients may live 250 miles away from their nearest specialist hospital and have to travel on bad roads by overcrowded buses to attend out patient clinics. Relatives often attend (even a first appointment) in their place making proper assessment impossible. I met one man who had travelled for 3 days to obtain morphine for his son. Sometimes another villager who barely knows the patient is sent to the out patient clinic if he happens to be travelling in to town.
Most hospital specialists are very focused on the disease and treatment and aren't trained to ask about or offer any symptom relief.
Pallium India is working hard to change this and ensure everyone has access to adequate symptom relief and support