We acknowledge with gratitude
–“Our journey into PC began with a book given to us back in 2003 by Dr Graham J Arthurs, a consultant anesthetist in the Wrexham Maelor Hospital and a founder member of the Nightingale House- a hospice in Wales, UK. It was a copy of the ‘Introducing Palliative Care’ by Dr Robert Twycross,. Till then, I do not remember coming across the term ‘Palliative care’ in my medical school teaching or training. It was around the same time I came to know about ‘Help the Hospices’ in the UK and the Institute of Palliative Medicine (IPM) in Calicut, Kerala, India. After about a year and a half, my curiosity created by the book and my correspondence with Dr Arthurs took me to Calicut! After completing the Basic Certificate Course in Palliative Medicine (BCCPM) in Kerala in May 2005, as advised by Dr Suresh Kumar, our friend and

mentor in Palliative care mission in Bangladesh, a mere coincidence immediately took me to the Fukuoka University Anesthesia department in Japan. By the way, I was an anesthetist and still designated so! I had expressed my new found interest to Prof Kajuo Higa of the Fukuoka University. The kind professor arranged a number of Hospice visits in the city outside my original assignment as a trainee anesthetist. This opportunity showed me both the similarities and the contrasts between a grass root community oriented approach in Keralla and the institution based approach in Fukuoka, two different places of the same world. Despite the wide variations in these` two approaches I came back to my country convinced of one thing; Bangladesh needed palliative care service desperately. Number of small group meetings was organized in different medical institutes as well as with non-medical groups.

I conveniently used my designations of being a consultant anesthetist in the only medical university of the country as well as an active member of a charity organization named Afzalunnesa Foundation. Following these events a seminar was organized by the Foundation”, the First National Seminar on Palliative Care.