The ‘Help Age India’ has been implementing its Community Managed Palliative Care Plus Project for elderly in its field areas in South India, since the last one year. Prior to this, it was implementing the Project Kiran for facilitating palliative care services in 10-12 villages in and around Cuddalore District in Tamilnadu since the year 2008. Following the review of the project in July 2009, the project was remodelled to provide a greater role for the CBOs of elders in the implementation and management of the project. This has resulted in the scale up of the project locations from 10-12 villages in Cuddalore, Tamilnadu to 52 Villages spread across two districts in Tamilnadu (Cuddalore and Nagapattinam) and Kollam district in Kerala. Given the footprints of EFEF and its strong penetration in organizing elders for elders, the decision to revamp the project and spread the project through the coverage areas of EFEF was found extremely good in not only scaling up the project from 10 villages to 52 villages but creating links for sustainably continuing the project
The Community Managed Palliative Care Plus (CMPCP) project (Ref. 317/10552) aims to provide palliative care to chronically ill elderly in the coverage villages of EFEF through active community participation and thus improve the quality of life of targeted elders in Tsunami affected villages of Cuddalore, Nagapattinam districts in the state of Tamil Nadu and Kollam in the state of Kerala. Overall, the objectives of the CMPCP as evinced by the EFEF Community leaders were 1) to empower the local community to look after chronically ill elderly and 2) to establish a cost-effective and locally driven system for provision of Palliative care for elderly.
