Modern healthcare has made remarkable advances in diagnosing and treating disease. Yet care can become fragmented when the focus shifts from the person to the condition. Person-centred care must address not only clinical needs, but also pain, psychosocial suffering, caregiver support and what matters most to the individual throughout the course of illness.
Through Cipla’s own dedicated Palliative Care Centre in Pune, a growing network of partners – government and charitable, community partnerships, volunteer champions, and a national palliative care helpline, Cipla Foundation has been supporting palliative care services for over 65,900 people facing serious illness as well their families, annually.
About the Nation Builders Series
The Nation Builders series by The Logical Indian celebrates institutions that integrate business excellence with transformative societal impact. Through sustainable initiatives, these organizations redefine corporate citizenship. This edition features Cipla Foundation, the social impact arm of Cipla, which has driven systemic health equity, compassionate palliative care, and community resilience across India.
About Cipla Foundation
In an exclusive conversation with The Logical Indian, Anurag Mishra, Head, Cipla Foundation reflected on the organization’s journey toward building a compassionate ecosystem of care across India.
Since 1935, Cipla has been guided by a simple yet powerful purpose: Caring for Life. From improving access to affordable medicines in India, advocating for patient access, and addressing unmet healthcare needs, including support for people living with rare diseases, Cipla has consistently sought to make quality healthcare more equitable and accessible. Its journey has been shaped by the belief that healthcare is not a privilege, but a fundamental right, and that meaningful progress requires solutions that serve both individuals and society at large.
Building on this legacy, Cipla Foundation was established in 2014 as the social impact arm of Cipla to deepen and expand the organisation’s commitment to communities. Working closely with the government, healthcare institutions, civil society organisations and local partners, the Foundation strives to contribute towards its vision of an equitable world where everyone has an opportunity to lead a healthy and fulfilling life. Through strategic partnerships and community-led solutions, it works across five thematic areas: healthcare, education, environment sustainability, skilling and livelihoods, and disaster response, reaching over 2,55,000 people annually.
Among its flagship initiatives is its work in palliative care, an area that remains critically underserved despite the growing burden of serious illnesses in India.
For instance, take the case of Deepika (name changed), who lives with advanced Alzheimer’s disease. Beyond medical management, the Cipla Foundation team introduced tailored daily routines, cognitive stimulation exercises, and safe caregiving practices into her care. Just as crucially, the multidisciplinary team provided structured counseling and home-care guidance to her son, creating a safe space for him to manage caregiver fatigue, emotional distress, and financial strain while ensuring his mother lived with dignity.
Palliative care focuses on improving the quality of life of people living with serious, life-limiting illness and their families. Multidisciplinary teams of doctors, nurses, counsellors, physiotherapists, nutritionists work together to prepare holistic care plans for patients that manage pain and distressing symptoms while addressing emotional, psychological, social needs of the patient. Importantly, palliative care is not limited to end-of-life support. It can be provided alongside curative treatment at any stage of illness, helping patients and their families navigate difficult health journeys with care, dignity and support.
Understanding the Palliative Care Gap in India
For millions of Indians living with serious illnesses, challenges faced are multi-dimensional. Pain, wound management, emotional distress, caregiving burdens and financial pressures can profoundly affect the quality of life of both patients and their families. Yet, despite an estimated 7-10 million people needing palliative care every year, fewer than 4% are able to access these services. [Source: Pallium India, the WHO Collaborating Centre for Training and Policy on Access to Pain Relief, and the Association for Socially Applicable Research (ASAR) (2025)]
This gap is compounded by systemic barriers such as a lack of palliative care infrastructure in public hospitals, limited training for general healthcare practitioners, and widespread social stigma. Furthermore, because serious illness impacts whole family units, the absence of structured home-care support places an immense physical and financial strain on primary caregivers, often forcing low-income households into debt or complete burnout. Addressing this crisis requires an integrated approach that embeds palliative services into primary, secondary, and tertiary healthcare levels.
Cipla Palliative Care and Training Centre
Recognising the need to make palliative care more accessible and equitable, Cipla Foundation has invested in building sustainable models of care and strengthening local capacities. At the heart of this effort is the Cipla Palliative Care and Training Centre (CPC) in Pune, established in 1997 by Cipla’s Chairman, Dr. Y.K. Hamied. Conceived as a space that combines medical expertise with compassion and dignity, CPC offers inpatient and outpatient palliative care services and has supported more than 26,000 patients with advanced stage cancer and their caregivers to date.
Beyond direct patient care, CPC is built around a unique family-centred model, where caregivers remain closely involved in the care journey. From music sessions and creative activities to festive celebrations that bring together patients, families, the staff, and community volunteers, the Centre fosters a genuine community of care. Home-based services are also delivered through Cipla Foundation’s partnership with CanSupport,- (a World Health Organisation recognized organization extending support to patients in the comfort of their homes.)
CPC also serves as a national hub for learning and capacity building, having trained hundreds of doctors, nurses, social workers and counsellors over the years. Its clinical protocols, training programmes and care frameworks have helped strengthen palliative care services across the country.
Building a Nationwide Ecosystem of Care
Recognizing that individual facilities cannot meet India’s vast healthcare demands alone, Cipla Foundation transitioned its core strategy from direct service provision to institutional ecosystem-building. Aligned with the Government of India’s National Programme for Palliative Care, the Foundation partners with government hospitals, medical colleges, cancer institutes, charitable and community-based organizations to integrate palliative care directly into mainstream public health systems.
Today, the Foundation supports 49 projects through 37 partner organizations, impacting over 65,900 patients annually across 20 states.
While its early efforts were largely focused on oncology, the Foundation today supports palliative care models for patients living with a range of serious health conditions, including neurological disorders, chronic respiratory illnesses, renal diseases and advanced heart failure, while also expanding access to paediatric palliative care. This shift reflects the growing recognition that palliative care should be integrated across disease pathways and age groups, rather than being confined to cancer care alone.
To advance this vision, the Foundation partners with leading institutions such as Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) etc. while also supporting the development of services in underserved geographies including Leh Ladakh. These partnerships span direct service delivery, workforce capacity building, curriculum development, research and policy advocacy, helping embed palliative care within mainstream health systems. In FY2026, the Foundation supported 450 healthcare professionals across the partners to deliver quality palliative care.
The impact of these efforts is reflected in stories across the continuum of care. For instance, children with complex neurological conditions are now accessing specialised paediatric palliative care that supports symptom management, developmental needs and family counselling. Similarly, patients with advanced respiratory diseases are receiving multidisciplinary support closer to home, reducing symptom burden and avoidable hospitalisations while improving quality of life.
Saath-Saath: A National Lifeline
Complementing its on-ground programmes, Cipla Foundation along with a network of 36 partner organisations, also run the national, toll-free palliative care helpline – Saath-Saath (1800-202-7777), to improve awareness, access and navigation for patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals.
Available in 5 languages, the helpline provides callers with information on palliative care services, helping connect individuals to appropriate support closer to their homes. By bridging information gaps and linking people to care networks across the country, Saath-Saath is helping make palliative care more accessible. Since its launch in 2021, the helpline has supported over 15,000 callers with information and referrals to palliative care services. Read more about the Foundations palliative care work here.
A Broader Commitment to Community Development
While palliative care remains a flagship area of work, Cipla Foundation’s efforts extend across healthcare, education, environmental sustainability and disaster response, reflecting a broader commitment to community well-being. In the communities around Cipla’s manufacturing facilities and offices, the Foundation works alongside local partners to improve access to healthcare, strengthen educational opportunities and support environmental resilience.
From bringing healthcare closer to underserved populations through their Mobile Health Units and advancing specialised treatment for complex conditions like Thalassemia and Pulmonary Diseases, to nurturing scientific curiosity among students through Mobile Science Labs and helping communities become more water-secure (37,76,648 KL water potential created across 105+ villages through creation and renovation of 270+ water structures), the focus is on creating enduring pathways to healthier and more fulfilling lives.
This work is further strengthened by Cipla employees, who actively volunteer their time and expertise across initiatives. Whether mentoring students, participating in community engagement activities or supporting environmental efforts, they play an important role in translating the ethos of Caring for Life beyond the workplace and into the communities around them.
Reflecting on the Foundation’s broader commitment, Anurag Mishra, Head, Cipla Foundation, said,
“At Cipla Foundation, we are deeply grateful to the patients and families who place their trust in us during some of life’s most vulnerable moments and allow us to walk alongside them, and to the communities, partners and volunteers who continue to work with us in building a more equitable world. Through each of these relationships, we carry forward Cipla’s legacy of Caring for Life, striving to bring dignity, opportunity and support wherever it is needed. Whether through healthcare, education or environmental sustainability, our commitment remains the same: to care for life in all its forms.”
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Cipla Foundation demonstrates that progressive corporate social responsibility must extend beyond episodic charity to build enduring, compassionate institutions. By establishing early frameworks of care, embedding palliative services into public health systems, and upholding human dignity at every stage of illness, the Foundation aspires to build a model of holistic corporate citizenship that can be adopted nationally by anyone who believes in the transformative power of palliative care.
How can public health policy and corporate institutions better collaborate to integrate palliative care into primary healthcare centers across rural and urban India?
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