Attrition as one of the challenges of developing a palliative care centre: experience of the Indian Institute of Head and Neck Oncology, Indore, India.

Palliative care is an essential component of health care delivery. With respect to India, currently, despite rapid socio economic development, there are tremendous challenges in offering institutional palliative care due to several factors. A major factor has been an acute shortage of trained palliative care professionals. Another has been the fact that the majority of India's population is not covered by any health insurance. We describe the problems, including attrition faced by the Indian Institute of Head and Neck Oncology, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.