Harmala Gupta

Gupta was studying for a doctorate at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1985. She is an alumna of Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi. After her recovery she decided to build support services for people with cancer and their families in India.

In 1991 Gupta founded Cancer Sahyog in New Delhi, a peer support group for people affected by cancer. In 1996 she founded CanSupport, registering it as a society in November of that year, to provide continuing care to people with advanced cancer. A pilot home-care project was launched in 1997 with the Dr B. R. Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital at AIIMS, and the first home-based palliative care service in Delhi began in 1998, run by Gupta with the British nurse Ruth Woolridge.

CanSupport has since grown into what it describes as the largest stand-alone home-based palliative care programme in India, adding a cancer helpline, day-care centres, outpatient clinics, training courses in palliative medicine, nursing and counselling, and services in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Jharkhand. In 2005 it became one of a small number of organisations in Delhi licensed to dispense oral morphine, and in 2006 it developed guidelines for home-based palliative care in India at the invitation of the World Health Organization.

Gupta is president of CanSupport and founder-president of Cancer Care India, an umbrella body of cancer support groups. She has served on the governing body of the Rajiv Gandhi Cancer Institute and Research Centre in Delhi and is a fellow of the Union for International Cancer Control in Geneva.

Gupta has received a distinguished alumna award from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, and an award for outstanding contribution to social service from the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, presented by the President of India. In February 2014 she received the Governor General of Canada's medallion for pioneering contributions to palliative cancer care in India. CanSupport was recognised with the World Health Organization's Public Health Champion Award in 2017.[2][3][4]