Rosebank Rotary Club donates a refurbished container to Baragwanath palliative caregivers
ROSEBANK – By providing the container, the club ensures that palliative caregivers have more opportunities to foster a culture of peace.
The Rosebank Rotary Club, in support of the 67th World Health Assembly, donated a refurbished container to the Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital’s palliative care department on October 15.
By providing the container, the club ensures that palliative caregivers have more opportunities to foster a culture of peace and compassion within the families and homes they visit in communities.
As the meeting room, used by the caregivers in the hospital, was no longer available, they appealed to the club to assist in providing a prefabricated building on the grounds of the hospital.
A prefabricated building is intended to allow caregivers to facilitate bereavement and family group meetings for patients and families of critically ill family members to provide them with ongoing compassion, hope, and comfort.
The club and the leaders of palliative care at the hospital supported the decisions of the 67th World Health Assembly for member governments and countries to establish a policy on integrating palliative care.
This became the Palliative Care Project named Bophelo which means ‘here is life’. A holistic, interdisciplinary, patient-centric model of care was established together with spiritual care training.
The important component of the project was to reduce the need for hospitalisation by giving comfort and quality end-of-life experience to terminally ill patients in their homes.
Volunteer caregivers, called ‘Grannies’, continue to play a major role in supporting the provision of informal home care visits. They are an important source of support for the terminally ill and their grieving families.
In her remarks, Gauteng Centre of Excellence for Palliative Care, Dr Mpho Ratshikana said, “Spiritual care provision given to 2 557 palliative care patients indicated the importance of the spiritual dimension in the palliative care of patients regardless of culture, religious tradition or spiritual belief.
“This has been an action-orientated service project that has engaged fully with the community, meeting their needs. Its success is thanks to many working together contributing their special expertise.”
Rotary opens opportunities for members to implement sustainable service projects to improve the lives of people in a community.
