Palliative Care at Blessed Gérard's Hospice

We run a hospice for inptient care, outpatient care and home care of needy terminal patients (mostly AIDS patients).

The hospice was opened on the feast of Blessed Gérard, 3 September 1996.

Inpatient hospice

We admit sick people for hospice and palliative care as inpatients.

When terminally ill and dying patients can no longer be adequately cared for at home, we admit them as inpatients. Sometimes this is done temporarily to give overburdened relatives a break.

Often the patient's condition improves so much thanks to our good care, full nutrition and continuous medical treatment that he or she can be temporarily discharged home again.

As a rule, however, the sick come to us to spend the last days of their lives here. Palliative care focuses on the well-being of the person. Loving care, willingness to listen and talk, human closeness and care are the focus. Adequate pain therapy and other medical aids are just as much a part of this as pastoral care and psychosocial support.

Hospice Home Care

We go where no one else goes ...With our outpatient care service, which travels to the "last corners" of the hinterland, we provide a unique service.

Our home care teams travel from the care centre to the sick people with a nursing specialist and complement and support the home care provided by the family.

These teams are also our "first responders" when we receive a call for help that a family is overwhelmed with care. We then guide the patient's relatives on how to properly care for their family member. The nurse decides on the further care plan with the patient's relatives.

If care cannot be adequately provided at home, the team, which usually travels by ambulance, takes the sick person to the hospice for inpatient admission.

Hospice and palliative care is the active care of patients with advanced, progressive and incurable diseases.

World Health Organization (WHO) definition:
Palliative care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness. It does this by preventing and relieving suffering through early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other physical, psychosocial and spiritual problems.

Palliative care

  • provides relief from pain and other distressing symptoms
  • Affirms life and views dying as a normal process.
  • does not seek to hasten or postpone death
  • integrates the psychological and spiritual aspects of patient care
  • provides a support system to help patients live as actively as possible until death;
  • provides a support system to help the family cope and manage their own grief during the patient's illness
  • uses a team approach to address the needs of patients and their families, including grief counselling when necessary
  • will improve the quality of life, and can also positively influence the course of the disease;
  • must start early in the course of the disease, in conjunction with other therapies designed to prolong life, such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and includes the necessary investigations to better understand and treat distressing clinical complications.

Source: National Cancer Control Programmes: Policies and Managerial Guidelines, 2nd Ed. Geneva: WHO, 2002 (Excerpted from: International Association For Hospice and Palliative Care)

Reports from the hospice

Mbongani (2021)

Mbongani has been in the hospice for several months. He was admitted to our hospice because of advanced tuberculosis and severe skin problems.

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Gift of the Lord - September 2007

Siphosenkosi was his name.

This means "gift of the Lord" in the Zulu language and we all called him simply "Sipho" for short. One and a half year old Sipho came to us on 2 October 2003. The social…

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Nyekeni - May 2007

It is Wednesday 9 May. We got a call for a home visit. In principle, nothing unusual, because relatives or neighbours often call us and tell us that there is a sick person in the family or…

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Remembering Menzi - Christmas 2005

In memory of Menzi

by Sr. Sheilagh Schröder

It was literally an answer to prayer that I came to work for Blessed Gérard's Care Centre. I had been working part-time in nursing in England and really…

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I found this sky of care

Dr Roux Martinez, then a resident in trauma and transplant surgery in Cape Town/South Africa, answered the question why she became an active member of the Brotherhood of Blessed Gérard:
"Indeed, there…

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How the impure leper ... - Christmas 2004

The story of Thandi and her son Bhekithemba should give you an impression of the terrible situation of many people in our area and show you how we help people in a meaningful and effective way:

Thandi…

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Help for Inkamana Abbey - Christmas 2004

Our President, Fr Gerhard, is a Missionary Benedictine from the Archabbey of St Ottilien in Germany and was sent out as a missionary to Inkamana Abbey in South Africa on 6 January 1987. When two of…

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In six days it will be Christmas ...

Today my friends and I are going to collect our retirement pensions. We will all meet at the pension office. We have a lot to tell each other and then we will buy fruit and bread from the market women…

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Sduduzo's story - Christmas 2003

Now I am happy, I have no more pain and no more fear!

- Sduduzo's mother tells his story and her own -

My name is Mpume and in July 2000, like everyone else, I was happy and confident about the…

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AIDS Report South Africa 19.4.2001

Khululiwe is only 15 when she becomes a mother. Particularly tragic: the young woman is already infected with the deadly HIV virus and so her baby is also born with the deadly pathogen. See now the…

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Bongani's story (Christmas 1999)

Bongani was brought to us on a Friday evening by his grieving grandmother. She was grieving for her daughter who had died of AIDS two weeks earlier and this was her baby. The grandmother had not known…

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From our newsletter of Easter 1999

We celebrate Mass every weekday in the chapel of Blessed Gérard's Care Centre & Hospice for the patients, volunteers and staff. In this way we experience help and strength in accepting Christ's…

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From our newsletter of Easter 1998

The new nurse at Blessed Gerard's Care Centre

It is with great pleasure that we introduce Sr Sanet van Zyl [pronounced: Sannètt fann Säil]. We would also like to welcome her very warmly to our team at…

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Ngiyabonga Nkosi! - August 1997

Ngiyabonga Nkosi

I am a 54 year old widow, have seven children, some of whom are married and have given me wonderful grandchildren. I live on a (farm) north of Eshowe in kwaZulu/Natal.

Three years ago…

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A heaven of care in the midst of AIDS hell

 "It actually started like in the good old romantic missionary times: A missionary is sent to a region as a "lone fighter". When he sets out to preach the gospel, he finds himself surrounded by crowds…

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