![Govt. moots exclusive centre for palliative care services](https://www.thehindu.com/static/theme/default/base/img/og-image.jpg)
Govt. moots exclusive centre for palliative care services
The Hindu
Services currently available at only a few State-run facilities
The State government is planning to start palliative care services, Minister K.T. Rama Rao has said. Sources in the Health department said that a centre dedicated to the services is being mulled. Efforts to reduce the suffering in end stages of patients suffering from terminal illness such as cancer is known as palliative care. According to World Health Organisation, “Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients and that of their families who are facing challenges associated with life-threatening illness, whether physical, psychological, social or spiritual”. Currently, these services are provided free of cost at some government hospitals in the State such as the MNJ Institute of Oncology and Regional Cancer Centre in Red Hills here.![](/newspic/picid-1269750-20250217064624.jpg)
When fed into Latin, pusilla comes out denoting “very small”. The Baillon’s crake can be missed in the field, when it is at a distance, as the magnification of the human eye is woefully short of what it takes to pick up this tiny creature. The other factor is the Baillon’s crake’s predisposition to present less of itself: it moves about furtively and slides into the reeds at the slightest suspicion of being noticed. But if you are keen on observing the Baillon’s crake or the ruddy breasted crake in the field, in Chennai, this would be the best time to put in efforts towards that end. These birds live amidst reeds, the bulrushes, which are likely to lose their density now as they would shrivel and go brown, leaving wide gaps, thereby reducing the cover for these tiddly birds to stay inscrutable.