Special spazio + spadoni Missionary October: A Mission of Compassion and Mercy Toward the Terminally Ill
“Mission is an immense work of mercy, both spiritual and material”
They quote Pope Francis (in his message for World Mission Day 2016, ed.) the doctors and nurses at St. Elizabeth Hospital, a Catholic hospital in Hyderabad, southern Pakistan, which runs a pioneering home-based palliative care program dedicated to the terminally ill: unique to Pakistan.
The program, as explained in a report sent to Fides by Father Robert McCulloch, an Australian missionary from St. Columba and vice-president of the hospital’s board of trustees, cares for an average of about 60 terminally ill patients a month. “It is an immense work of mercy,” the missionary remarks. “In Pakistan, terminal patients are regarded purely as a cost by the hospital culture. Their illness is not alleviated, and it is often the families who bear the expenses, which are very high, to seek treatment or pain relief,” he explains.
“As early as 2005, the Board of Trustees of St. Elizabeth Hospital began discussing the need to initiate home-based palliative care for the terminally ill in Hyderabad, a city of 4 million in the Southeast. This ‘visionary’ program has since come to fruition, providing an opportunity to manifest compassion and mercy in a practical and extraordinary way in Pakistan. At St. Elizabeth Hospital, we are convinced that the best and only answer to violence is compassion,” he remarks.
The palliative care team consists of four male nurses, one female nurse and one physician. Most of the patients cared for are Muslims, but there are also Christians and Hindus. An important aspect of the home palliative care service at St. Elizabeth’s is that “it facilitates interfaith harmony through the caring ministry of Christian nurses who go to the homes of people of different faiths, and also often require spiritual support from Muslim, Christian and Hindu ministers of worship.”
It was a service that,” he reports, ‘required specific preparation, and several nurses took courses and obtained training certificates for ’palliative care’ or care of cancer patients in facilities abroad such as in Australia and Singapore.
Notes the missionary, “The palliative care department at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital depends on donations. Some of the equipment and devices for continuous administration of pain medications are very expensive. The patients’ families cannot cover the expenses, there is no insurance coverage, and the government does not allocate funds. Only Providence allows St. Elizabeth’s to continue this care.”
True to its mission, St. Elizabeth Hospital also offers a valuable “mobile clinic” service that visits villages in the area, spending entire days on medical examinations, treatment, therapy, and monitoring of the poorest people, reaching more than 50,000 people a year. For this service on Oct. 24 in the capital Islamabad, the hospital will be honored with an international award, the “Multicultural Achievement Award 2024,” given by the government of Austria.
There is also considerable effort in the field of education and training: the hospital has started an “Obstetrics School” for girls and a specific Development Center for boys from disadvantaged families. In addition, continuing education and training of medical and nursing staff is carefully pursued.
The hospital was founded in 1958 through the contribution of St. Columba missionaries in Pakistan and now legally belongs to the Catholic Diocese of Hyderabad.
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