HOSPICE SAN CAMILO
To alleviate, console and dignify the life of the terminal patient is possible
Who are we?
A foundation formed by professionals, religious leaders, and dedicated volunteers who are committed to relieve pain, to provide comfort and support, to improve the quality of life so it can be fully lived up to its natural end.
Our Mission:
Improve the quality of life of terminal patients, through Palliative Care, welcoming, accompanying and educating the family.
What can we offer?
• Pain therapy services and inter-consultations of surgical subspecialties.
• Personalized care and support of patients with pain and their family.
• Awareness about the right to pain relief.
• Mutual Aid Groups.
What is Palliative Care?
Active care for patients, from the moment that their disease does not respond, to remedial action. The main objective is to control pain and other symptoms. The goal is to offer the highest possible quality of life for patients and their families:
• Provides relief from pain and other symptoms.
• It integrates the physical and spiritual aspects of the patient.
• Contributes for the patient to lead a life as active as possible.
• It receives, accompanies and educates the family to face in the best way the patient's illness.
"What was done to any of my most insignificant brethren, was done to me"
(Matt. 25:40)
Hospice San Camilo: A Work of solidarity for the suffering, sharing hope, love, relief and comfort!
FECUPAL, together with citizens and businesses who support the "Hospice SAN CAMILO"'s work, host and provide relief, consolation and peace to the terminally ill.
Dear friends, I feel sincerely joyful to know I can count on you, your family or company and the dynamic and creative spirit that has always characterized the Ecuadorian population for this new human adventure that is beginning in Quito in order to complete the "Hospice SAN CAMILO" project which will accommodate patients in terminal stage and allow them to live fully their last human experience with dignity, feeling loved and served with the same tenderness as God loves us.
A Hospice or Palliative Care Center is a place of shelter and temporary internment. It is an ideal home for those whose hope of life expectancy diminishes, where the terminally ill can live in peace, where their care is given in an atmosphere of respect, peace, communication and mutual support.
The purpose of this hospice is to provide complete, active and continued assistance to patients and their families by a multi-professional team when there is no medical expectation of a cure. The primary goal is to give the patient and his family a good quality of life without trying to stop or speed up the process of dying. It must cover the physical, psychological, spiritual and social needs of the patient and their families, and if necessary, this support should include the process of mourning.
One can speak of Hospice as a global or holistic approach to health that goes beyond the medical interventions in order to care of the person as a whole.
Palliative care or hospice type care, as referred to in some Anglo-Saxon countries, has a long history. The earliest ones could well have been the hospices and inns of the twelfth century medieval Europe. In the sixteenth century appears the paradigmatic figure of San Camillo De Lelis, founder of the Camilo Religious Order, who began taking care of the foul smelling and the dying people in the Italy of the 1500s. His followers were known as "the parents of the good death”. In the nineteenth century some charismatic figures appeared, among which were pastor Flinder in Kaiserwerth Foundation in Prussia, and, especially, Mother Mary Aikenhead, founder of the Irish Sisters of Charity and Our Lady's Hospital in Dublin. This congregation started the St. Joseph's Hospice in London in 1909, where Cicely Saunders, the heart of the modern Hospice Movement in 1967, was trained. Another noteworthy figure of our time is the Canadian Balfour Mount, who in 1976 led the first unit of PC into hospitals for seriously ill patients. The term "palliative care" was initially used in Canada.
The term "hospice" is a combination between hospital and home, since it reflected the idea of what was intended to achieve: a place for patients and their families with the scientific capacity of a hospital and the warmth and hospitality of a home.
The Hospices have not become places to die, but instead places to give care. The data available reveals that over 45% of patients admitted to these centers are discharged to be cared for at home.
In many places it promotes the possibility of dying at home with a good professional support. It is an interesting as well as a complementary proposal. However, there can be no single currency for all. There are times when it is very difficult, if not almost impossible, to keep the patient in his environment, either for the need to control the symptoms or because the family gave up, which usually are the two reasons for entering a PC unit. And, ultimately, the opinion of the patient must always be taken into account, to which, in many cases, the entry in an appropriate institution provides a security framework to be respected. The proposed assistance includes the custody of the patient, continuous care, permanent education and updating all health workers and volunteers about the specific field, research in the field of palliative approaches and procedures.
This is a novelty in the Latin American context. With your help, Quito will also have its first Hospice to accommodate patients who are no longer curable.
Remedial interventions strongly become a fundamental human right for every patient. The Holy Father Benedict XVI drew attention to this commitment, "it should be stressed once again the need for more palliative care centers that provide comprehensive care, providing assistance to the sick and the spiritual support they need. It is a right that belongs to all human beings and that we must all commit ourselves to defend. "
In Ecuador thousands die from cancer each year; there is a gradual and steady growth of zero positive and AIDS patients, there are some 9,000 people in the most advanced stage and there is an absence of appropriate institutions to accompany them in the last stage.
“Fundación Ecuatoriana de Cuidados Paliativos - FECUPAL”, is a non-profit organization and recognized by the Ministry of Health, Ministerial Agreement No. 001058 dated October 16, 1997, now in alliance with the Religious Order of Ministers of the Sick (Camilo religious order) and sustained by the generosity of good people, is trying to build a non-hospital "Hospice" with 25 beds: 16 beds for cancer patients, 5 beds for AIDS patients, 4 beds for day care Hospital and for treatment of pain and some space for doctor's offices. This initiative intends to make a form of assistance in the terminal stages of life, of high human, spiritual and social value.
FECUPAL Foundation is accredited in Ecuador due to the provision of free assistance, specifically to terminally ill patients. This recognition is a source of great satisfaction, but also is a stimulus for new challenges that the dignity of each person and the Christian charity urges us to do.
Since 1998 until today we have made over 6,000 visits with four interdisciplinary groups that voluntarily offer comprehensive support to the needs of patients and their families during illness, preparation for imminent separation and support after this occurs.
The terminal patient is not like other patients. He/she undertook a journey whose success in life is already known and must be able to live the time left calmly, with dignity and without physical, emotional and psychological suffering; therefore, it is necessary to ensure suitable mitigating interventions, on time and provided by trained personnel, leaving the patient free to choose how and where to live the last moments of the patient's life.
The patient has the right to live in his/her own home, but when this is not possible, he/she should be able to have a place such as the Hospice, with all the comfort he deserves. If Annually 90% of our patients in Ecuador finish their days in their homes for lack of a health system on which to lean on, today a more intensive home support and a host structure that can nurture hope in the patient's last moments is required.
We are called to be more of a Society, a Samaritan Church, with hands and arms open to welcome that is able to receive and value each of its citizens and members. Today to be Christian involves becoming more human and proclaim Jesus Christ with boldness and creativity in all environments where the Gospel has not been announced or received enough, especially among the sick.
The Catholic Church in Latin America has always provided service to the poorest in an attempt to promote human dignity and the promotion of human economic solidarity, education, culture and care. Today we all have the commitment to proof our love of God and our neighbor with concrete deeds. Let's give life to a culture of life.
San Alberto Hurtado used to say: "In our work, our people know that we understand their pain."
"Identified with the Master, our life is driven by the impulse of love and service to others ... as Christ's disciples let's open paths of life and hope for our people who suffer ... with firmness and determination we will continue with our prophetic commitment discerning where the path of truth and life is, raising our voice in the social spaces of our towns and cities, and especially in favor of the poorest members of society " (Benedict XVI.)
Each person brings with himself great dignity that we cannot forget and that we must respect and promote. Life is God's free gift, gift and commitment that we must sustain since conception, in its various stages until natural death, without relativism.
Our human sensitivity invites us to be builders of areas in the service of a culture for life, even under unfavorable conditions. The experience of assisting many terminally ill allows us to feel that they are accompanying us from heaven.
Certainly a work like the Hospice of San Camilo in Quito arrives to create a new style of life in a complicated time for the global financial crisis. But, when were the conditions ideal for charity and love? Jesus himself was born in a small, precarious and improvised space. One day St. Augustine gave this testimony: "If Jesus had demanded for the ideal conditions to be born in, perhaps he never would have done it; if Jesus had intended to convert the Pharisees he would still be waiting; if Jesus had wanted to avoid the cross, he would not have died and never would have provided salvation. Jesus has given everything for free, and invites us to give ourselves totally and with a generous heart."
Dear friend, do not be afraid. With your help we can continue to assure complete care to the patients and provide competent care and loving support to their families.
Today more than ever we need your solidarity, generosity and opening of your heart. If every good, grateful, hopeful and augural word we have received from so many patients in their last days who have been assisted in recent years or from their relatives would become deeds, there would certainly today be more Hospices in Ecuador and less drowned out and silenced suffering.
If you're immersed in darkness, a lit candle is worth more than a thousand protests against darkness. The San Camilo hospice Project has been financed by 60% until now. We count on the Providence that always manifests itself with a human face. By providing with the heart and opening the hands the Lord fills us with blessings and we become builders of the new "civilization of love." Your gesture of solidarity will allow you to relate more to our dream and give more impulse to the life of your family or your business.
To live with solidarity is to globalize charity and give a new soul to the waiting humanity. The miracle of life is to be able to always start again. Therefore, this challenge that we are building is the most important, it is from all and for all. It is life and not a speech about life. A fresh look on personal and social life, creative, full of passion and generosity, and educational works.
May this exciting enterprise be the sign of hope that sustains life, reaffirming its value at each moment and allowing the growth of an ever more truthful and humane brotherhood.
Your solidarity will host some 150 terminally ill patients each year in the San Camilo Hospice and will help assist some 200 more in their homes. Thanks to your generosity we will be able to continue to be close to the terminally ill that have more difficulties and that need professional intervention that will be provided urgently and humanely.
¡FECUPAL needs your help!
