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Sharing and Learning from each other was the underpinning idea that led to the team for IAPCONKochi 2019 finalising the theme for the conference. The theme was
The 26th International Conference of Indian Association of Palliative Care (IAPC) was organized at AELI Hills, Aluva, Kochi, Kerala, India from 8th to 10th February 2019. The conference was jointly hosted by the Consortium of Pain and Palliative Care units of Ernakulam district on behalf of IAPC.
The Scientific committee worked hard to improve the range of topics discussed, catering to the large multidisciplinary palliative care family. Evidence based presentations were at the core, and many young speakers from all over India made the best use of this opportunity.
The topics were chosen with imagination and focus on new possibilities. The feedback on the broad range of topics; with options for everyone was very useful to us, In a nut shell, as elucidated by Dr Michael Minton a senior palliative care expert and a long time friend of India from Oxford, UK, “the growing Indian Palliative care Scene” was well represented in the scientific content.
The delegate number was close to 1100, representing 16 countries across the world.
We had an excellent abstract review committee with national and international experts to review and score those for oral and poster presentations from a considerable number of abstracts received from palliative care teams all over the world. The top four abstracts selected by the reviewers were presented as part of a parallel session. This was the first time an online method to submit abstracts was introduced in IAPCON history.
The pre conference workshops started off well with good attendance, 8 in number but most significantly, we offered a “home visit “hands on experience to interested delegates. This was specifically planned to highlight the community based participatory model in Kerala.
The program had unique plenary sessions with a range of speakers; from a volunteer and user, caregiver, media person, and a nurse for the first time in India bringing in their strong voices. Free paper sessions were shifted from their usual early morning slots to during the day enabling good attendance and interactive discussions. Meet the Experts sessions at the start of the day helped people share and learn from experts.
One of the sessions that brought excellent feedback was the Case based discussion with good participation on all the three days. This was an innovative way to have teams planning and working together from months ahead but also to give importance to the clinical aspects of palliative care in an interesting manner.
There were quite a few challenges during the conduct of the conference which helped us reflect and learn to improve and perform better the next time.
The current issue of IJPC is the compilation of abstracts presented as paper, posters, and talks of plenary and parallel sessions of IAPCONKochi 2019.
On behalf of scientific committee, I would like to express my deep gratitude to all who submitted a great range of abstracts and co-operated for publication.
We would like to thank the Scientific Committee, and the Advisory Board for their expertise and support.
I would like to thank Dr Mhoira Leng, Dr Sunitha Daniel, Dr Rajith Ramachandran, Dr Shoba Nair, Dr Athul Joseph Manuel, Miss Pallavi Naidu, Dr Republica Sridhar, Dr Sunil Kumar MM, Dr Biju Raghavan, and of course Mr Radhakrishna Menon and Dr Hyder Ali, the Organising Team for their support.