Hospice seeks to raise Sh100m for inpatient cancer facility

Meru Hospice seeks Sh100 million to build an inpatient facility for cancer patients needing specialised palliative care. [Courtesy]

Roselina Mitine, Jennifer, 58, has stage 4 cervical cancer.

She is in severe pain most of the time and cannot find a place in public hospital wards because there is no space.

Though she uses liquid morphine for management of her pain and to be able to sleep, her suffering is not over.

She has no energy, lives 90km away in a mud house with no trained caregiver, and she says she would be grateful if a hospital admits her for 24-hour nursing care, proper nutrition and proper monitoring and management.

Unfortunately, the Meru Hospice has no in-patient wards to admit her and others in similar positions.

The hospice gives care to hundreds of its cancer patients as outpatients and sends them back home.

With over 500 cancer patients under palliative care, the Meru Hospice is stretched for lack of funds.

The hospice in Meru Town is currently grappling with a shortage of funds to cater for its patients, some in their 80s, and children.

With many living in rural villages far from the hospice, the hospice is now planning to construct an inpatient wing to effectively cater for some of its patients.

Gladys Mucee, its CEO and a palliative care nurse, said they were appealing to well-wishers to help them raise the funds to establish wards.

"We have 537 patients, among them 35 children under palliative care. We have organised a major fundraiser on October 3 to raise funds to construct an in-patient facility at Meru Hospice grounds. We hope to raise Sh100m," said Ms Mucee.

Tens of people suffering from various types of cancer under the care of the hospice have succumbed in the last few years, and stakeholders have called for urgent measures by both the central and county governments.

According to Me Mucee, the hospice established in 2000 has lost many patients and needs financial assistance to offer palliative and other necessary care.

The building occupied the hospice at Mwendantu area was built by North Imenti MP Rahim Dawood and Mucee says a cancer centre is needed to help the large number of affected people in Meru, Tharaka-Nithi, Isiolo and neighbouring counties.

Mucee said a majority of the 537 patients are from poor families who cannot afford more than one meal a day, yet they need a proper diet for their condition.

“Meru Hospice has a big burden because of the cancers but because we are a non-profit organisation, we offer free services. The services we offer include pain and symptom management. A patient in stage 3 and stage 4 endures extreme pain, and one of our major objectives is to ensure that we manage the pain,” she said.

Mucee revealed that they had more women than men.

"The women are also more in terms of survivorship, because most of the women are diagnosed early and so they can seek treatment early,” she revealed.

But it is the number of children with cancer that has become a major worry for the hospice.

“If we count all the children we have attended and those who have died, they are so many. Before, we never used to have children suffering from cancer, but now we have so many of them. The most prevalent cancer in children we see is leukaemia,” she said.

She said the hospice needed more staff and essential medicines and other items for the patients, even as she revealed the burden the staff were forced to bear, too.

“We have lost so many people. Most of them are referred to us with advanced cancer. When they come, the cancer has spread all over their body, and they are usually at the end-of-life stage," she said.

That notwithstanding, the hospice has to manage the pain and give the patients hope.

“The drugs are too expensive. A big number are on morphine and a 100ml bottle costs between Sh4, 000 to Sh6, 000. Yet at the hospice, we have been giving them for free. Only recently did we introduce a cost-sharing of Sh500. We have the burden of buying drugs, and I would also request the government and well-wishers to support us with drugs,” Mucee said.

She said: "Our mission is to support cancer patients. We have over 500 patients who visit our facility and whom we visit at home. We are in dire need of funds to support what we do,” she said.