Welcome Hospice Services, Tanjung Arang

A statue of Mother Mary with her hand outstretched as if to receive the souls of those who were shunned from family and community, greeted us when we reached the hospice. I did not know what to expect but as always I geared myself to expect the worst. What I knew that there were 30 patients or occupants in this place who are contracted with the virus HIV and were given treatments to prolong their life and also to ease their pain and suffering.

We had a short briefing by the person manning the centre and he gave us an overview of how the centre was operated, when it was established, how many other centres are there, basically the whole nine yards. Currently the centre is housing 33 occupants and there are plans to build more rooms to house more. Unfortunately due to the increasing medical costs that each patient incur is unbearably high, thus the centre are unable to accept more.



Let's just say that the budget for each patient that is given by the government is not enough. The centre has to bear the rest of it, by selling their own organic plants that they plant on their own as well as doing odd jobs whenever it is required outside the centre. They also rely heavily on donations. It also really helped when they received a special recognition from the Malaysian Aids Council last year. But is this enough to sustain them another year?



Currently each patient is registered with the Sungai Buloh Hospital for a planned treatment for free. They would have to go to the hospital and take this treatment on the same day at the same time, or else the treatment would not work. Moreover, if the first stage of treatment is missed, that particular patient would have to bear the next stage of treatment on his own, which will be more expensive. Here the centre has a case where this person missed his first treatment a couple of times. The hospital had no choice but to stop the first stage treatment. This patient coupled with a string of other diseases, could not cope with the high expenses that he had to incur for his second treatment. Thus now he is at the centre, not knowing what his future holds for him. Darn it.



Welcome Hospice Services has several homes under their credit. One of which that houses healed drug addicts, called Positive Living Community. These are ex-patients who were brought from the streets, stripped off their lust for drugs and slowly trying to gain respect from the community and family members. Actually there are several reasons why they remained in the centre. First, they found their true family here. And second, their real family cannot accept them anymore. In the centre, together with the love from the caregivers alike, they regain their confidence and self worth. In fact they have their own drama group - Falling Leaves, which will be doing a nation wide tour soon. They will be in Sabah performing this coming 31st May. Those who love theatre should go for this as the performers are the occupants themselves depicting their whole life story. Pretty impressive.



So what do they need now, you ask me. On top of what the centre needs to survive and provide (canned food, rice, sugar, bedsheets, pillows, perishable food, clothes, cooking oil etc), the other aspects that is much needed is the human interaction. The occupants range from as young as 20 years old to an uncle named Mr Wong who is 74years old, are all either abandoned or hardly visited by family and friends for fear of contracting the virus themselves.



A refresher course, the virus HIV can be only be contracted by having sexual intercourse, sharing of needles and mother through baby. Fortunately if detected fast, there is a treatment plan for pregnant mothers who are HIV positive to take in order for the virus to not reach the baby.

Whatever it is, they need to have that sense of belonging again to the outside world. WHat if it was one of our closest friends or our relatives? What if there was a 50/50 chance of them to kick off that drug habit and live a normal life, if not better? I personally relate to this very well. I had a relative who was way out there and one day he just vanished. We thought he was done for. But one sweet day, he came back with clean cut hair and pressed clothes with a Pastor. He has turned to a new leaf and walking in the light of God. How the love of men/women had changed him so much..

We had done our part for the day, I might say. We sang, we visited, we talked, we planned and we visualize.



What else can be done to help them? They need to survive on their own and they need to be taught how to fish, and not to be fed fish all the time. We all could see that there were tremendous things that could be done for this hospice centre.

But the question is now, will you have the initiative to go and find out how to help? Will there be funds for it? How many more that has to be turned down due to lack of funds and ultimately our 'tak apa' attitude, thinking that there are others who will help? Why can't I help?

Let's just ponder on that..
But please do not ponder too long. It is better to help one, than to be bogged down by helping too many. It just takes one to make a difference.