The Project
Pediatric Palliative Cares Hospice and Diurnal Center
Costa Rica has reached health indicators that reflects our governments efforts to improve our population's life conditions; therefore, it has been managed to have one of the lowest infantile mortality indicators in Latin America, (1. 02% in the 2002). Nevertheless it exists a group of children and adolescents who face and will face limited life conditions and who will need special attention, which entails a difficult and painful process for the patient and his/her family and a great demand of services.
Under this context the activities of a Palliative Cares Program(PCP) are an alternative and an answer for the assistance of these little ones and their families. That's why, in 1992, under Legal Certificate no. 3-006-127309, Pro Palliative Care Unit Foundation was born as a non profit organization, with the objective of developing the Palliative Cares and Pain Control Clinic at the Children's National Hospital, pioneering today in Costa Rica and Latin America, the attention of children and adolescents with a terminal disease, with the purpose of taking care of those who, by the character of their terminal disease, healing medicine does not offer them an alternative, but palliative medicine does.
The Foundation is born with the "service to the others" philosophy, philosophy that has extended today in such way that, without the contribution of the Foundation, the Palliative Cares Clinic at the Children's National Hospital would not be able to include the palliative attention to almost 300 children plus their parents, brothers and sisters of whom we take care of nowadays around the country. Saint Gabriel Shelter and the Home Visits Program, are the other two great achievements of the Foundation.
However, there is a necessity to count on an intermediate service between the hospital and the home that contemplates both, the patient hospitalization in a specialized center (Hospice) and/or the daytime attention in a Diurnal Pediatric Palliative Care Center (DPPCC) that will allow us to improve and facilitate the patients assistance offering a greater range of intervention possibilities, and extending the coverage of the patients and their families.
The first stage of the Pediatric Palliative Cares Hospice and Diurnal Center will count on a distributed construction in the following way: Administrative area, Diurnal Center Area, Dormitories, Morgue, Chapel and External Area. It will also includes games hall, sensorial room, pharmacy, meetings and training rooms, library, swimming pool and trails, among others.
Thus, the project of the Pediatric Palliative Cares Hospice and Diurnal Center , is today the goal of the Pro Palliative Care Unit Foundation, whose administration will be in charge of its Board of Directors, composed by:
- Lisbeth Quesada Tristán, MD - President
- Lourdes Jiménez - Secretary
- Guaria Vargas Alpízar - Treasurer
- Paul Garnier - Municipal Representative
- Ivania Ayales - Presidential House Representative
This Board of Directors directly has the project's administration responsibility, as well as the responsibility of designating specific people in charge of each of the stages of this project.
Once the Pediatric Palliative Cares Hospice and Diurnal Center is built and operating , the Board of Directors will be due to continue raising funds for its maintenance and operation.
