Cherkasy is waiting for a hospice

Olena Berdanova from Cherkasy lost her two-year-old son four months ago. It was not possible to overcome cancer. A hopelessly ill baby was dying in the hospital, VVS.Ukraine reports.  "We saw and realized that everything, nothing will come back. But some support, of course, psychological, was not enough," the woman recalls. Every year in the Cherkasy region, according to the statistics of the volunteers of the "Live Tomorrow" Association, up to a thousand terminally ill people die, including children. 80% of these hopeless patients of the region are taken away by cancer, and the rest by other diseases.

A few of them live to their old age with dignity and pain. The service of palliative hospice care could ease the last days of the sick. For more than 10 years, it has been operating in several regional centers of Ukraine, but there is still no full-fledged hospice in Cherkasy Oblast. There are only rudiments, a volunteer movement, but the service is not organized. In most cases, Cherkasy volunteers say, patients who have only a few days to live are discharged home. Parents and children are mostly left alone with grief and pain.

"The essence of palliative care is to give a person the quality of life he deserves. Regardless of social status. Everyone has the right to die with dignity. The fact that a person cannot be cured does not mean that he cannot be helped,"  Svitlana Fedorova, one of the initiators of the creation of a palliative hospice care service for children in Cherkasy, assures.

From beds to hospice

Measures for the development of palliative and hospice care in Cherkasy until 2015 have been approved in the region. Accordingly, local chief doctors should bring to the local council sessions the issue of creating a material and technical base and opening palliative care hospices for children and adults. There is not much time left until the specified date.

Viktor Paramonov, chief physician of the Cherkasy Regional Oncology Dispensary  , says that all conditions for the operation of hospices in Ukraine are defined by law, but the political will of local authorities is needed to implement it in practice:

"In order to start a full-fledged hospice service in Cherkassy and the region, only the political will of the leadership of the region and the city with the definition of specific terms and the material part is needed. A room, at least, and other basic things." For adult patients in the region, 55 palliative beds have been created in general wards of city and district hospitals, but the problem of doomed sick children and their families has not been solved.

"There are 40 palliative beds functioning on the basis of four district hospitals of the region. We also currently have 15 such places in the therapeutic department of the Second Cherkasy City Hospital", reports the press service of the Department of Health Care of the Cherkasy Regional Administration. However, says  regional freelance specialist in palliative medicine Tetyana Honcharenko , the presence of a bed does not mean that a person is being provided with adequate care. The worst situation is in the districts.

"Hospice patients apply for a place of residence, where they are provided with medical care in general wards that are not equipped for this purpose. There is a bed, but there is no proper care, as specially trained personnel must be involved for this. Caring for a sick person who has a limited prognosis for further life falls on the shoulders of relatives. Unfortunately, they don't always know how to help a patient in such a situation," Ms. Honcharenko states.

All these beds are designed for adult patients, and the burden of the last days of a sick child's life is borne by the parents alone. Often morally and materially exhausted.

However, after a meeting with the initiative group,  the director of the health care department of the Cherkasy MEC Oleg Stadnyk  assured that in the near future it will be possible to repurpose several beds in one of the city's hospitals into palliative care for children.

According to the website "About everything" http://provce.ck.ua/

(article: http://provce.ck.ua/hidnist-do-ostannoho-na-cherkaschyni-chekayut-na-hospis/)