Our Partnership with Tanzania Hospice

Hospice Services, Inc. is proud to announce that our organization has partnered with a Hospice in Tanzania, Africa through The Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Sahara Africa (FHSSA). Our partnered hospice is Marangu Lutheran Hospital's Hospice and Palliative Care Program.

NO donations made to Hospice Services, Inc. will be used to support our partnered Hospice(unless requested by the donor), funds for the Tanzania Hospice will be raised separately.

**Eliamani, Director of our partnered hospice, and her husband, Pastor Alphaeus Shayo, visited Hospice Services, Inc in October 2009, to further grow our partnership. Below they are pictured in front of the main office of Hospice Services, Inc. in Phillipsburg, KS.

**Staff escorted Eliamani and Alphaeus to many of the communities in our service area, where they learned about our local Health Systems. The Shayo's also had opportunities to give programs about our partnered hospice and Tanzania to our Staff, Board of Directors, and to a few community groups.

Thank you to all those who helped make the Shayo's trip to Kansas a memorable one and to those who so generously gave their time, gifts, and monetary support.

Please continue to visit our web-site for updates on our partnership!

The United Nations AIDS report on Global AIDS, released last December, confirms the continued and expected increases in mortality due to HIV/AIDS worldwide.

In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, there will be over 2,000,000 deaths due to AIDS this year, not counting the burden of malaria, cancer, and other diseases. In 2005, 520,000 children died of HIV/AIDS in Africa - that's one every minute.

Amidst all the attention and resources going towards prevention and treatment in the war on AIDS, care for the dying receives scant recognition despite the enormity of need. Even in countries offering the highest levels of hospice care in Africa (South Africa and Uganda), barely ten percent of those dying receive hospice. In many African nations, there is little or no access to opioid analgesics, condemning thousands each week to painful deaths. Adequate pain management means better quality of life and reduced stigma. Stigma continues to be a significant factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in many resource poor nations. Giving personal care in the home setting opens the doors of trust, where vulnerable people can talk openly about serious issues, including how a disease is spread and why a premature death is occurring in their midst.

There is a crying humanitarian need globally - in Africa especially - for palliative care. This includes the heart-wrenching need for pediatric palliative care for the sick. We know the care that's needed, we must commit ourselves to making sure it's provided.

How far can $1.00 go in Africa??
Tanzania