By Bertha Badu-Agyei
Accra, March 30, GNA – Monsignor Bobby Benson, a Catholic Priest and Founder/Director of the Mathew 25 House, an HIV care centre, has appealed for public support to complete a palliative care centre under construction in Koforidua.
The 40-bed palliative care centre is the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa to support the terminally ill and vulnerable with Godly care.
The facility, also known as a Hospice, is an initiative of Monsignor Benson, whose Matthew 25 house has provided care, shelter, medication, food, and educational support to thousands of People Living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA).
Orphans and vulnerable children whose parents had died from AIDS over the years have also benefited.
The Hospice is a home where sick and dying persons are cared for in the comfort of caregivers and their relatives creating an environment for solidarity in the end of life so that people, irrespective of their backgrounds, would die in dignity and peace without the usual emotional pain, which both patients and families go through during those moments.
Making the appeal upon a visit by participants of Palliative care training programme to the site, Monsignor Benson noted that the facility, which was about 80 percent complete, required Gh1.8 million cedis to fully make it operational.
The two-day palliative care training for chaplains and nurses, covered topics such as palliative care and medicine, nutrition at end-of-life stage, communication and breaking bad news and spiritual care.
Monsignor Benson was grateful to those who had supported the project, notably Mrs Matilda Amissah-Arthur, widow of Ghana’s former Vice President, Bishop Afrifa Agyekum and all past Bishops of the Koforidua Diocese and Father Andrew Campbell.
Mrs Amissah-Arthur broke the grounds for the construction of the facility in 2014 as an extension of the Charity work of Mathew 25 House.
GNA