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Palliative care has been gaining momentum in the PAN Asian region in the last decade. Palliative care is just about treating the patients and creating a space of comfort and dignity. The movement involves humans from all aspects of health, volunteers from the local community along healthcare workers that include dedicated medical professionals, nurses, educators, and therapists of various aspects came together to build a community for palliative care working beyond culture and borders. With this vision in mind, the collaborative team from Singapore International Foundation(SIF) and Pallium India was one such program created to train the trainers of palliative across the Indian Subcontinent. This project, involving 14 states in India, involved empowering a movement to create a wealth of knowledge to be shared. The inaugural program for this three-year project titled ‘The Singapore-India: Palliative Care Accessibility Core Training (PACT)’ was conducted in Kerala, a south Indian state of the Indian subcontinent from March 3 to 6th 2025, and involves a 5 module and its a step forward, as it incorporates Music therapy as one of the major non-pharmacological modes of integrative medicine.
The project is being conducted with 30 professionals from across various healthcare aspects coming from the many states of India. They are the master trainers who will be training others in their states to encourage more such healthcare workers to be trained into palliative care. The training program was planned to take on the successful palliative care that has become a community-led model and is being carried out successfully in the state of Kerala and focuses on the Training of the Trainers(TOT) to train the 30 professionals. PACT aims at enhancing practices towards successful palliative care across India, utilising the collaborative efforts of Singapore International Volunteers and volunteers from Pallium India through knowledge sharing and enhancement of skills in palliative care.
It is important to note that music therapy is still creating its space within healthcare in India and other Asian countries, and therefore creating awareness towards it is essential. Teh project involves Music therapy as a non-pharmacological therapy in palliative and forms a main component of the project.
It was an eye-opening experience being invited as the Indian counterpart along with Ms May NG from Singapore, a trained music therapist from Australia and Practicing in Singapore (member of the Singapore Association Of Music Therapy). The learning on palliative requirements and how music therapy can play a part in the palliative care team was quite overwhelming in terms of how it was accepted by the two counterparts of the program as well as the participants.
It gave us an opportunity to learn how in a country that has a very huge population only a few states have a well-structured palliative care program and hospices. The team in Kerala informed how the palliative care system was a people’s movement and was not governed by the medical professionals or the Government, but by the people. The network of volunteers helps to provide support to palliative care patients with various needs at their doorstep at the shortest of notice.
During the 4-day program music therapy sessions were conducted as a hands-on workshop model and included learning experiences through role plays in various methods/techniques of music therapy including Receptive(song lyrics discussion/relaxation), improvisation and creative (Song Writing), which can be used with palliative care patients to address physical, psychological, emotional and overall aspects as a way of being supportive towards the patient as well as the caregivers along with all other modes of support. The sessions were very well received and having been invited as a guest lecturer, It was a great pleasure to sign up to become a volunteer into the program as a part of the music therapy team to train the participants through the rest of the three years. This gives time to create a structured use of music that is being taken to the volunteers across the country as we have a shortage of music therapists and empowers the music therapy community and the use of musical intervention with this population.
The link to the local newspaper is below(its in tamil language):
https://www.tamilmurasu.com.sg/lifestyle/palliative-care-accessibility-core-training-workshops
Bhuvaneswari Ramesh
Regional Liaison - South East Asia
World Federation of Music Therapy (WFMT)
