International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care
M.R.Rajagopal MD is a palliative care physician from India. He qualified as a physician from Trivandrum Medical College, Kerala and as an anaesthesiologist from All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi.
While working as Professor and Head of Anaesthesiology in Calicut Medical College, he and his colleagues founded the Pain and Palliative Care Society (PPCS) in Calicut in 1993. By creating a palliative care delivery system suited to the Indian cultural and social background, it attracted international attention and in the year 1995 was designated a WHO demonstration project. Over the next decade it grew to the present Institute of Palliative Medicine and a network of about 100 palliative care centers in the state of Kerala, and prompted generation of several outside the state. This initiative has now resulted in palliative care reaching about 30% of the needy in Kerala as against a national average of less than 0.5%.