Woman helps establish hospice after loss of father

By Joe Ombuor

Elizabeth Ndung’u was spurred by trauma to seek change she wanted.

What is today Nakuru Hospice grew out of Elizabeth’s father’s three-year painful struggle with cancer.

An accountant, Elizabeth, 50, bled her earnings on expensive drugs in the desperate hope that her father would live, but the old man died in 2006.

"Among his drugs were tablets that cost Sh20,000 per dose. I had to buy a dose of 28 tablets every month," she recalls.

Elizabeth Ndung’u. [Photo: Jennifer Wachie /Standard]

Financial agony

"I was the sole regular income earner in the family. We were financially overstretched by my father’s medication cost. My income and savings were being depleted, forcing me to rent out my car for Sh25,000 per month to buy drugs.

"But fate conspired against the project. The car crashed hardly a week later and the anticipated rescuer was no more. A friend who saw my financial agony advised me to take my father to a hospice.

"There was no hospice in Nakuru. My car was gone and I had no money to hire one whenever I had to transport my father to Nairobi. In a wild gamble, I decided to persuade the management of Nairobi Hospice to consider opening a branch in Nakuru.

It surprisingly worked, albeit too late to save my father’s life.

"They first asked me to mobilise nurses around Nakuru for training in palliative care. The provincial hospital alone gave us 20 nurses who together with others from private and municipal hospitals underwent palliative care training by experts from Nairobi Hospice.

"That cleared the way for me to take my father to the provincial hospital, where he was finally admitted to receive hospice attention. He eventually passed on, but my dream of a proper hospice lived on because I did not want others to experience what I had been through," she says.

One day in May 2007, Elizabeth who had invested her hopes in the Provincial Medical Superintendent to help her pull off the feat felt that it was taking too long to approve a hospice for Nakuru and went to see the Provincial Medical Officer of Health (PMO) over it.

"The PMO could not comprehend my quest even after my father’s death. After much soul searching, he asked me to submit a proposal through a new Provincial Medical Superintendent who in turn sold the idea to then Health Permanent Secretary James Nyikal.

Quality life

"To my delight, my proposal received a nod from the Ministry of Health and a green light was given to have the proposed Nakuru Hospice at a site I had identified next to the provincial general hospital where a Government building belonging to the hospital had been gutted down by fire.

"My next move was to convene a consultative workshop of stakeholders.

"Our appeal for donations was well received with Safaricom being the first on the block with an initial Sh4.8 million to renovate the burnt out building. Another Sh475,000 went into landscaping and utilities such as water, and electricity.

"The Kenya Charity Sweepstake (KCS) came in with Sh200,000 to secure the compound’s security with a chain link perimeter fence, a gate and a booth for security personnel. KCS Marketing and Public Relations Manager Peter Njoroge described the hospice as a "worthy service to the people that must be supported to the hilt".

"The Lions Club of Nakuru donated Sh500,000 to buy furniture, while UK-based hospice Care Kenya gave £10,000 as set up cost to buy medicine and general equipment.

Nakuru town MP Lee Kinyanjui donated a vehicle worth Sh3 million through the Nakuru Constituency Development Fund to facilitate our movement.

Nakuru Hospice now gives palliative care to over 100 patients with terminal cases per year, assisting them to lead quality life. "Nothing is more fulfilling to me than helping to ease the pain of terminally ill patients," says the mother of two who shuttles between Nakuru and Mombasa, where she works for a non-governmental organisation.

The hospice also trains health professionals on palliative care.