ABSTRACT
In India, the escalating figures of elderly patients with Long Term Care needs indicate the urgency for palliative care. The issue is serious given the fact that many states do not have adequate palliative or aged-care program and virtually no operational end-of-life care strategy at all. Promoting palliative care for dying patients, especially the geriatric population, seems a distant dream. The impact of Western approach to death is fairly evident in annual conferences in the field of palliative medicine, which attract high level of participation of international experts in an effort to 'train the indigenes', so to speak, in meeting a good death. There is also little evidence base in India to suggest the nature of inputs that need to be incorporated in palliative care when rural-urban variations are taken into consideration and the delivery modes best geared to such variations. Palliative care in India has a poor service mix – a feature otherwise necessary for care of the elderly.
