5 days ago
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A new chapter in healthcare support has begun in Belize. Today, the Belize Palliative Care and Hospice Association officially inaugurated and blessed St. Joseph Home, the country’s first dedicated palliative care facility. Located at 5678 Vasquez Avenue, the facility will provide care for patients living with serious illnesses while also offering support to families during some of their most challenging moments. The blessing ceremony marked the result of years of work by the Belize Palliative Care and Hospice Association to expand access to compassionate care in Belize. Palliative care focuses on improving a patient’s quality of life by managing pain and symptoms, while also providing emotional, social, and spiritual support for both patients and their loved ones. The palliative care movement in Belize began more than two decades ago, with healthcare professionals and volunteers providing much of the support through home-based care. Over the years, efforts continued to raise awareness and strengthen services for people facing illnesses such as cancer and other life-limiting conditions.
Alva Pennil, Chair Person: “People want to help, everybody can’t do it by themselves. So we had like a mixture of people that came in, we have volunteers that visit the homes, and then we had the opportunity to bring Mr. Federico Gionnelli here who has the expertise in the area and can assist us. When you come to your last stage and you’re lying in that bed you start thinking of a lot of things. And a lot of things, maybe unfinished things, maybe things that you weren’t so happy about, maybe things that you are happy about. We need to embrace that. Yes, we will die and so we need to make sure people are happy, people enjoy what they do. So we provide that care in the home and you find that once you take care of those, what we call spiritual needs, those little things that irk us,, once you take care of that you find people die much more comfortable. If you look at how the rooms look, it’s no slap up thing. We give quality so your last days you’re comfortable.”
With the opening of St. Joseph Home, the association now has a dedicated space where patients can receive care in an environment centred around comfort, dignity, and compassion. The facility is also expected to provide a place where families can receive guidance and support as they navigate difficult health journeys.
Chaplin Frederico Gionelli: “This initiative came about in 2018 when I came here as a Jesuit and the Society of Jesus asked me to help to see what was possible to develop as a palliative care service. So I was here for six months and then the Society of Jesus brought me back in 2023 to establish and develop a palliative care service and establish a hospice facility. So it was a program before but between COVID and because everybody was volunteering, it was closing or kind of closing and up and up and then became more robust the past three years. Now we expanded, we triplicated the number of patients to a hundred. We have a pharmacy, we have two teams that go to visit patients, so it grew.”
The Belize Palliative Care and Hospice Association says the establishment of St. Joseph Home is an important milestone in improving healthcare support for Belizeans living with serious illnesses and ensuring that no one has to face those challenges alone.
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