The amendment follows the Centre's directive to States to relax NDPS rules and will provide succour to over 75,000 terminally ill cancer patients throughout the State.

A draft amendment framed in this regard by a sub-committee comprising drugs controller, excise officials, experts of the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) and Pain and Palliative Care Society, Kozhikode, has been cleared by the Law Department. It will soon be moved in the Assembly.

The amendment seeks to empower the State Drugs Control Department to grant recognition to pain and palliative care centres for receiving direct supply of oral morphine from manufacturing units.

These centres will be saved the paper work currently required for obtaining licences from the ExciseDepartment, which often delayed the supply of morphine to hospitals.

Moreover, patients who visit RCC from far-off places like Kollam, Kottayam, Ernakulam and Thrissur can receive their quota of morphine locally.As per the amendment, a centre will be eligible for recognition only if it is recommended by an expert panel on the Regional Cancer Centre and Pain and Palliative Society. The panel will inspect facilities at these centres before approving them for the supply of oral morphine.

Both Government and private hospitals will be entitled to the facility provided they fulfil the requirements, which include a trained doctor and nursing staff.

Once recognition is granted, morphine will be released based on the requirement of respective centres and in conformity with the World Health Organisation standards of 4 gm per terminally ill patient per year.

However, the relaxation of rules will not be applicable to morphine injections. Excise officials and the drugs control department will be empowered to carryout independent checks at the centre to monitor stocks and prevent the misuse of tablets.

Experts here termed the amendment as `path-breaking' and felt it would serve as a model for other States. Morphine, they added, if given in the right mix, at the right time in calculated intervals, can offer ``unimaginable relief'' to terminally-ill patients.

The State has about one lakh cancer patients at any given time. About 30,000 new cancer cases are reported annually, of which 10,000 are registered at the Regional Cancer Centre here.

A plant for manufacturing morphine tablets will soon be set up at the College of Pharmaceutical Sciences here under the aegis of the RCC.The two nodal centres, RCC and the Kozhikode-based Pain and Palliative Care Society, will be the main beneficiaries of the new arrangement.

New centres are also being planned at Idukki and Pathanamthitta. As part of this, 12 doctors and an equal number of nurses have been imparted pain and palliative care training at RCC and the KozhikodePalliative Society.