Palliative Care Declaration

Efforts to relieve the symptoms, ease distress, provide comfort, improve the quality of life, relief from pain & other distressing symptoms; relief from anxiety and depression, including the fear of pain, a sense of security that assistance will be readily available if needed.
Poor symptom control, fear and a lack of acceptance of death before dying, can be minimized by ensuring that appropriate medical and social support services are available.

Develop the sustainable delivery systems in place to ensure that effective cancer prevention, early detection, treatment and palliative care service is available to all.
Provide the cancer patients with access to palliative care in all the equipped treatment facilities.

Promote the development and use of palliative Care guidelines that are relevant to local needs and resources along with the availability of the well trained staff to meet the needs of patients with cancer.
Take steps to tackle the many barriers to optimal pain control. Work with pharmaceutical industry to increase access to palliative care medicines that are affordable and of assured quality.
Educating the patients, that their pain is treatable at every stage of disease, along with curative treatment.
The Palliative Care Declaration 2011 is developed by Cancer Aid Society for ratification by the 18th International Conference of Indian Association of Palliative Care

Cancer leads to a poor quality of life and kills more people than AIDS, TB and Malaria combined, and the need for Palliative Care is set to rise dramatically over coming decades unless concerted action is taken now.
More than 70% of these deaths will occur in low-and middle-income countries that will require Palliative Care however resources available in the fight against Cancer and Palliative Care are limited or nonexistent in these countries.
Approximately 2/3rd of the World’s new cases of Cancer are in the advanced and incurable stage at the time of diagnosis when only Palliative treatment is possible
Cancer deprives families, of the caregivers and income earners causing appalling suffering and often economic ruin, as families sink all their resources into paying for the curative treatment seeking alleviation from agonizing symptoms, due to lack of Palliative Care facilities.
Keeping in mind the limited resources available in the developing countries, major emphasis should be given to the Palliative Care.