1994, Robin Fox, then editor of the British medical journal
The Lancet, visited the
Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta (now
Kolkata) and described the medical care the patients received as "haphazard".
[4] He observed that sisters and volunteers, some of whom had no medical knowledge, frequently made decisions about patient care because of the lack of doctors in the hospice: "There are doctors that call in from time to time," Fox wrote, "but usually the sisters and volunteers (some of whom have medical knowledge) make decisions as best they can."