Date:06/11/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/11/06/stories/2008110654740600.htm

Kerala - Kochi

When men in khaki offer solace

K.P.M. Basheer

KOCHI: The police, with their professional and political bosses nodding in encouragement, are joining the pain-and-palliative care movement, which is fast becoming a grassroots-level social movement in Kerala.

“We are encouraging the Police Department to have at least two personnel in each police station in the State trained in palliative care,” K. Suresh Kumar, director of the Institute of Palliative Medicine (IPM), Kozhikode, who is one of the pioneers of the palliative care movement in the State, told The Hindu. Top police officers have been very supportive and have now agreed to make palliative care part of community policing.

Starting with the first ‘palliative-care-friendly’ police station at Chemmangad in Kozhikode city a few months ago, the men and women in khaki are signing up as volunteers in large numbers to offer solace and care to those who are terminally ill and bedridden. Dozens of police personnel in Malappuram district, the heartland of the palliative care movement in India, attended a two-day training on November 3-4 at Malappuram. On Thursday, the sub-inspectors, circle inspectors and Dy.SPs in the Ernakulam Rural police district will attend a sensitisation programme at Aluva.

A group of police personnel in Kerala Armed Police-2 at Muttikkulangara in Palakkad district has just completed their palliative-care volunteer training. In July this year, the KAP-4 at Kalliassery in Kannur district, at the initiative of its then commandant T.M. Abubacker, set up the Maitri Pain and Palliative Care Society.

“The police have a large network that is on call 24 hours a day,” P. Vijayan, Ernakulam Rural SP, who is organising the Aluva workshop, told The Hindu. This is the first time that the officers of an entire police district are being drawn into the movement. Mr. Vijayan, who is a former SP of Malappuram, said he was inspired by his experience with the movement there. However, the police personnel would not be full-time volunteers. “Our role will be complementary,” Mr. Vijayan said.

Mr. Abubacker, who is currently SP, Special Investigation Group-3, CB-CID, recalled that when he, as commandant of KAP-4, suggested the idea of setting up a palliative care unit to his boss, IGP B. Sandhya, she readily agreed and had later asked other KAPs to follow suit. Mr. Abubacker also took the lead in setting up a palliative care unit in his native village Cheekkilodu.

M. Sainudheen, president of the Kozhikode City Palliative Care Society, is highly appreciative of the service provided by the police personnel in the three ‘palliative care-friendly’ police stations in Kozhikode city —Chemmangad, Kasaba and Panniyankara.

The five or six policemen in each of these stations, which are part of the Janamaitri programme, are made ‘beat officers’ in charge of 500 homes. They visit these homes once in a month and are familiar with the problems of the locality.