A prescription from Kerala for transforming healthcare (BMJ, 22 July 2022)

Summary

M R Rajagopal (known to all as Raj) is an internationally renowned Indian anaesthetist and palliative care physician who is one of the founders of a system of palliative care in Kerala that is admired the world over. The Lancet Commission on the Value of Death said that societies everywhere could learn from the Kerala innovation, which is a system led by the community with health professionals as supporters rather than leaders. Raj has now published his readable, insightful—and at times funny—autobiography, Walk with the Weary: Lessons in humanity in healthcare, which is both a severe critique of modern healthcare and a prescription for transformation and highlighted by Richard Smith in this BMJ article.