SM's hospice is a comfort zone for sick kids
MANILA, Philippines - SM Foundation’s Pediatric Hospice and Palliative Care Center at the Lung Center of the Philippines (LCP) provides a cozy comfort zone for children, below one to 13 years, who are stricken with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. There they are given the tender care that traditional medicine lacks and they are eased of the pain of their affliction because they can play and interact with their kind. Their parents or guardians are likewise given the proper training on how to cope with the nature of their disease and the fragility of human nature.
Built and completed on Nov. 29, 2011, the hospice was donated and turned over to the LCP last Feb. 14. LCP takes care of maintaining the 150-square-meter facility complete with a playground, toilets (for boys and girls), a bathroom, and three comfortable beds where the kids are checked up and given their doses of chemotherapy by doctors and nurses from LCP and volunteers from the Philippine Cancer Society Inc.
Actually named Felicidad Sy (after SM’s matriarch) Pediatric Hospice and Palliative Care Center, this is the first of its kind in the country although SM Foundation will study the project’s impact on society before replicating it elsewhere, explains SMFI project officer Albert Uy.
Dr. Sergio Andres Jr., hospice chair, in fact has been buying with his own money the candies stacked in jars at the mini counter so that kids can just ask for some from the nurses. When there are lots of kids he orders snacks or lunch for them, again from his own funds. “This is actually part of the fun and pleasure that we like them to associate with the hospice so that their every visit is a memorable experience for them,” he points out.
The donation includes brand-new sofa sets, beds, play equipment, and various medical equipment, TV sets, and DVDs. The facility is just one of the 69 other Felicidad Sy Wellness centers (for different groups and sectors) put up and maintained by SM Foundation.
Dr. Andres says not all patients going to the hospice are hopeless and time-bound (with six months or a year to live). There are those whose cure rates are very impressive like for leukemia, the cure rate is as high as 85 percent. The hospice not just administers chemotherapy (intravenous drug) to patients, it also offers services like psychosocial, emotional (including play therapy and music therapy), and spiritual treatments.
SM Foundation, PCSI, and their partners are now collaborating to donate chemo medicines to the hospice patients.
Anjanette de Leon says that five to 10 percent of all cancer cases in the Philippines are pediatric cancers. Before, it was tuberculosis and pneumonia but now, with cancer awareness increasing, there are more reports of cancer among children.
