Hospice offering patients ray of hope

Fridah Kambayi, 50, puts on a temporary prosthesis on her left side of the breast. She underwent an operation after being diagnosed with cancer of the breast in 2016. JUNE 24, 2018. [PHOTO: MERCY KAHENDA]

Fridah Kambayi, 50, wears a radiant smile as she enters a hospice in Nakuru.

The hospice is located at Nakuru Level Five Hospital and once there, the mother of three from Railways estate heads towards the physiotherapy room.

Nobody can tell that Ms Kambayi has breast cancer, until she removes a breast prosthesis from the left side of her chest to be observed by a medic.

“Every day, I wake up full of hope and strength. Rarely does anybody believes I have cancer, until I show them my my chest, where my breast was removed. The hospice comes in handy as my source of encouragement,” she said.

At the centre, patients get psycho-social support, medicine and counselling.

Elizabeth Ndung’u, the founder of the hospice, smiles as she watches patients getting service.

Ms Ndung'u, who is trained in finance, says the idea for the hospice was born after seeing her father Arthur Ndung’u painfully lose the battle to prostrate cancer in 2005. He had been diagnosed two years earlier.

In 2007, the Ministry of Health approved the project. Safaricom Foundation donated Sh4.8 million while other well-wishers like Lions Club and Hospice Care Kenya also came in handy.

In 2009, through lobbying, she established the centre in the casualty area of Nakuru Level Five Hospital. In 2011 it moved to its current site.

Ndung'u received 142 new cancer patients when the hospice opened. The number gradually increased to 190 in 2010, then 224 the next year, 232 in 2012 and 490 last year