Need of Palliative Care Services in Rural Area of Northern India

BACKGROUND: Palliative care is comprehensive care that provides symptomatic relief and enhances the quality of life for people experiencing serious health-related suffering. There is an increasing need for palliative care services in India. Estimates for population requiring these services are essential in order to meet the increasing need for palliative care services. OBJECTIVES: The objective was to assess the proportion of population requiring and receiving palliative care services. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional research design was adopted for the study. The study was carried out in the village, Dhanas, Chandigarh. All the residents residing in the selected rural area were included in the study. Tools used for data collection were a screening questionnaire consisting of three questions, a sociodemographic sheet, a clinical profile, the Barthel Index of activities of daily living (ADL), and a pain rating scale. Analysis of the data was done using SPSS version 19 (IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 19.0.: IBM Corp). RESULTS: A total of 10,021 people from 884 households were screened in the study. The results revealed that the prevalence of need for palliative care services was 2/1000 population. None of the 19 participants with unmet palliative care needs were receiving any home- or institutional-based palliative care services at the time of assessment. Nearly, one-fourth of the participants had total dependency on caregivers for ADL. CONCLUSION: The study concluded that there is a need of palliative care services in the studied rural community of Chandigarh. These data can be used for planning and implementing community-based palliative care services in the studied area.