Background Health care system in Tanzania is overburdened by increasing number of patients in need of palliative care due to patient and family denial of diagnosis which result into late starting of treatment, AIDS pandemic and few treatment and psychosocial facilities which result into death. St. Lucia Nursing Home is doing home visits to identify patients in their homes the team is working with trained community health volunteers through developed home based care checklist to identify needs of the patients with life threatening illness and refer patients to the appropriate service providers.

Aim To identify readily available resources within the community based activities which are focused on provision of component of palliative care issues of death, dying and end of life care.

Methods Mapping of service providers, data collection and analysis, organisational audit and semi structured in depth interview was done.

Results

• 450 patients with chronic illness were identified and visited from September 2013–September 2014, mostly suffered from cancer and HIV/AIDS. The needs were identified by the palliative care team and initiated referrals to appropriately service providers to meet their physical, social, psychological, and spiritual pain needs.

• A monthly stakeholder meeting is organised to share patients experience and capacity building offered based on the needs.

Discussion In low resource settings few organisations can offer comprehensive palliative care services.

Conclusion Integration of community and professional markedly improves access to palliative care services for patients while Referral and networking enhance quality of care in resource limited settings.