Filenews 5 January 2023
The "Palliative Care Center for Friends", as is the official name of Hospice Talas, is picking up speed after the issuance of the planning permit for its house in Stephanie, Tala. While waiting for the building permit, which is the necessary condition for the start of construction works, there has been feverish work to prepare the many works required, starting with the maintenance works of the building and the surrounding area.
In the last week of the year, some thirty volunteers corrected waterproofing on the roofs, transported building materials, pruned, cleaned the gardens and collected carobs for the "Pafiakos" donkey sanctuary in Kato Paphos. Among them, the team of Latchi Water Sports, and ethnicities from the UK to Russia. Atlas Coffee in Mesogi offered coffees. A celebration of volunteerism that is constantly flaring up with the aim of making Hospice the cause of all Paphians in the battle for the relief of human suffering.
We would like to remind you that recently a relevant tribute to the work was published by the British newspaper "Guardian", highlighting in this connection the now well-known story of conjugal murder in Tremithousa by a 74-year-old British man in order to relieve his 75-year-old, also British, wife from the torment of the disease.
As reported, the licensing of the Friend's Hospice palliative care centre in the Stephanie area of Tala, issued after a long process, came too late for the British couple, since already David Hunter from Wales, a resident of Cyprus for two decades, is in prison awaiting trial for helping his wife Trish get rid of the unbearable pains by euthanasia.
As reported in the British print media with millions of circulation, to date more than 2000 patients, and of them 70% Cypriots, have passed through the warm embrace of Friend's Hospice even though it has lost its roof for over two years, when the clinic that hosted them needed the beds to join GHS:
"From then on they were homeless until the courtesy of the current building. In it was designed a centre with six individual rooms and a homely environment that will help patients in their final stages to live with dignity in conditions of care and love.
With a lot of effort, the planning permitting process was recently completed. It was necessary to comply with the terms of the Department of Urban Planning, the Fire Brigade, the very strict standards of the Ministry of Health and many other services. Meanwhile, the agony of the nursing centres, clinics and hospitals, which had previously sent their patients there, reached its peak. The gap in patient care is still too big."
