Interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu

One of my predecessors went into a local hospice here in Cape Town, St. Luke’s. I went to see him there and I had expected a very depressing atmosphere, morbid and unpleasant but it was light, there were flowers, the birds were twittering in the garden. He could have been in great pain but because they were able to provide him with the right kind of pain killers he wasn’t and he lay there with a serene look on his face. I imagined how others might be in different circumstances, where they don’t have their loved ones near them, where the circumstances were distressing. I was so thrilled that I agreed to be patron of the Palliative Care Association in our country. I hope that we can persuade many more to support this tremendous movement.

World Hospice Day is a very important project because when somebody dies their family, the loved ones and the patient are at their most vulnerable and they need all the help that they can get. Spiritual help, material help and physical help. Millions are dying without peace, in great distress and pain, sometimes even without food.

My wife, within the last two or three weeks, has lost three members of her family, to the horrendous HIV/AIDS pandemic. I have seen distressing images of the kind of thing that happens when someone does not have the kind of palliative care that you can get in the hospice movement. People are not even able to be washed, they do not have enough to eat, they need to have someone to do many intimate things for them. I am so aware of people living in squalor and what that does to exacerbate an already difficult, anxious time.

I’m very passionate in my support of the Hospice movement which says - We want to see people leave life with dignity, peacefully and with as much comfort as can be provided.

We are blessed in South Africa by the many, many volunteers and in many other parts of the world, the hospice movement would probably go under if it had not been for the wonderful, wonderful array of volunteers who make themselves available.

South Africa lacks resources too. You want to be like Oliver Twist and say, ‘Can we have some more?’ Can Government and the corporate world invest in what I think is a right. Everyone ought to be able to die with dignity with as little pain as possible and as comfortably as they can be made –that should be regarded as an important a right as the right to life.

I have been quite amazed at what has been happening in Kenya. They’ve received very considerable support out of UK and they are doing some marvellous work with the hospices that they are setting up. The hospice movement in the UK sends out people to train those who will be involved in palliative care and I want to salute those who are stretching out a hand to help out in what are often quite, quite distressing circumstances.

People make a mistake in thinking that the hospice movement is about dying - it is about living. It is about ensuring that the patient is as comfortable as possible but it is also concerned about those who are left behind. The loved ones need as much support and caring as the patient. And so it is investing not in a morbid way in the dying, but it is investing in life. It is ensuring for instance that the children of the patient are going to be looked after. Ensuring that you don’t have children heading up households, as is happening in South Africa in many instances. When the patient who has a terminal illness worries, they may be worrying “What is going to happen to my children, what is going to happen to my house, what is going to happen to…?” And you are concerned with them for those who are going to be left behind who are living.

We need stalwarts who are prepared to champion the cause. One thinks for instance of how we fought against apartheid, one of the things we were suggesting was, for goodness sake - apply sanctions! That was not a very popular cause but after a while you were able to persuade people that that was the right thing to do. We cannot hope for a change in government policies until people make it clear that this is a priority concern.

Governments often want to do the least that they have to do and will only respond to the pressures that they get from the public because they constantly watch what the polls are saying – is this government doing its work well? The champions, the advocates of palliative care should be learning lessons from those who want to bring particular issues to the fore. Look at what is happening with Make Poverty History. It’s not a particularly popular cause with some governments, but you are getting it placed very squarely on the agendas of governments; people are saying this is an issue you cannot avoid. And we can do the same on October 8th and raise the profile of the palliative care hospice movement.

God bless you.

Source: BBC World Service Outlook