The Community Hospice, which serves seven counties in the Capital District, including Albany, Saratoga and Schenectady, and the Island Hospice, a hospice and bereavement center in Zimbabwe, formed the first collaboration between an American hospice and an African hospice in 1999. Since then, 75 hospice alliances between African and American hospices have formed.
These connections are made through an organization called Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is now located out of the Washington, D.C., area but was started in Saratoga County.
In December, Val Maasdorp, the clinical manager for Island Hospice in Zimbabwe came for a visit to Niskayuna to see how things are running in the Capital District and to share some information about how things are running in Zimbabwe. While the institutions in Africa might both be called hospice, the functions vary ` in Island Hospice, 95 to 99 percent of the patients have AIDS.
`We are what is called a hospice and bereavement service, so we look after patients with an illness that is likely to shorten their life,` said Maasdorp.
Started in 1979, they received their first AIDS patient in 1996. Maasdorp said that slowly the number of AIDS patients at Island Hospice increased, and currently, the majority of their patients either have AIDS or AIDS-related cancer.
`We don’t have any in-beds ` it’s all home-based care, so we drive out and help family members so that they can care for the ones they love at home,` said Maasdorp. `We also have a bereavement service so we can take care of people who have had an illness that does not go through our program.`
In America, according to Maasdorp, people don’t enter into hospice until they are in the final stage of life ` they have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and their doctors have predicted they only have six months left to live. It is paid for through insurance. In Zimbabwe and other parts of Africa, hospice is free.
The Community Hospice teamed up with Island Hospice in 1999.
`In 1999, when it really became noticeable that AIDS was a global pandemic, there were several people from the Community Hospice who went to Island Hospice and formed this partnership,` said Karen Hamm, who is a liaison for the partnership between the two hospices and also a community grief counselor for Albany County Hospice. `We felt that it was important to share the knowledge that we have about this global pandemic.`
The Community Hospice also donates money to Island Hospice and has a program set up for St. Peter’s Hospital employees where they can make a payroll deduction to go to the African facility. Community Hospice also holds a number of fundraisers and makes material donations as well, specifically of supplies that are difficult to find in Zimbabwe.
`We’ve brought drugs over every time we travel there, and we try to transport materials depending on what their needs are,` said Hamm.
In exchange, Community Hospice has learned a great deal about how to run their hospice and deal with patients through Island Hospice.
`Their hospice in Zimbabwe is the oldest hospice in all of Africa so they’re very knowledgeable in how to run a hospice and how to set up a hospice,` said Hamm. `The hope is that all of the hospices throughout the country could develop partnerships with the hospices in Africa so we can share our knowledge and finances and medications.`
She said that the partnership is reciprocal because the programs are so different and they have so much to learn from each other.
This partnership (Island Hospice also has a partnership with a hospice in Central New York) spawned many others across the nation, and then the organization called Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa was created.
`In 1998 and 1999 several of us who were leaders of hospices were invited to go and visit some African hospices,` said Philip DiSorbo, executive director of Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa.
`We were totally blown away by the impact of the AIDS epidemic, and the African hospices were totally overwhelmed with thousands of people dying everyday with no pain medication whatsoever,` said DiSorbo.
DiSorbo and his colleagues returned to America and decided that the American hospice movement needed to do something about the AIDS epidemic because it `was and is the worst epidemic in human history,` according to DiSorbo.
He said local representatives came back, and in 1999 incorporated and founded a new organization called the FHSAA (Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa), whose purpose is to mobilize American hospices and other organizations to establish one-on-one relationships with an African hospice.
`Our hospice [Community Hospice] became one of the first partnerships that was established in 1999, and they continue to help them. Nationally we have 75 partnerships,` said DiSorbo.
Like the Community Hospice, all of the hospices provide their partners with funding, ongoing emotional support and technical assistance.
`The vision of FHSSA was to become a national project to raise the consciousness about the impact of AIDS in Africa,` said DiSorbo.
For more information, go online to www.communityhospice.org or www.fhssa.org.“