Fr Robert McCulloch's own experience has inspired him to help the terminally-ill in Pakistan.
In Pakistan terminally-ill patients are treated as sources of income by the medical profession and the hospital culture. If their illness is not relieved, the financial situation of their families is wrecked as they seek for a cure or for pain relief.
Fr Robert McCulloch and Patras Inayat
Palliative care in Australia and New Zealand provides good medical treatment and the support of compassionate health carers to people who are diagnosed with a terminal illness.
I came to know of home-based palliative care in 1997 when my family cared for our mother after she was diagnosed with advanced cancer. We became part of a caring team of nurses, doctors and family. We learnt from one another and leaned on one another. It was a sad but consoling 10 months. I had seen many terminally-ill people in Pakistan without hope, without care and in great pain. My personal experience of palliative care helped me to see there was a way to respond with care and compassion to their needs.
In 2005, the administrative council of St Elizabeth Hospital in Pakistan of which I am Chairman began discussing the possibility of commencing a home-based palliative care for the terminally-ill at Hyderabad, a city of 4,000,000.
We understood that it was a powerful way of expressing our Catholic commitment to the dignity of life even in the presence of the reality of death.
Its introduction will enable the hospital to continue to offer in a new way the best possible care at the lowest possible cost to those in need and to manifest compassion and mercy in a practical and outstanding way in Pakistan where society is fragmented by violence and mistrust and where medical care is profit-oriented.
An important benefit of the home-based palliative care service is that it will facilitate inter-faith harmony on a rich personal level through the caring ministry of committed Christian nurses, male and female, in the homes of people of different faiths, and through the meeting and mutual support of the religious ministers of Muslim, Christian and Hindu patients.
In preparation for beginning the palliative care at St Elizabeth Hospital, one of the male nurses, Patras Inayat, is doing the year-long Certificate in Palliative Care Nursing at Calvary-Bethlehem Hospital, Caulfield. Members of St Vincent de Paul conferences in Melbourne and office staff at the Columban Mission Centre welcomed Patras and helped him settle into his studies. He will return to Pakistan in November.
The home-based palliative care that is starting at St Elizabeth Hospital is a first in Pakistan so we don’t have local expertise to fall back on. However, a group of four senior Catholic nurses with academic positions in universities and schools of nursing in Karachi have come together as the Nursing Advisory Service for planning and implementing the palliative care at St Elizabeth. We plan to begin in 2012 with 10 terminally-ill patients being visited at home in the morning and evening.
We have already begun sourcing and purchasing the necessary equipment. Some of the equipment such as syringe drivers for continuous pain-management medication is expensive, made more so by the refusal of the Pakistan government to grant any sort of sales tax concession to St Elizabeth Hospital.
We also need to purchase a small 4-door car for the palliative care nurses to get in and out of narrow streets in Hyderabad. It will cost $10,600 but is a one-off purchase.
Fr Robert McCulloch SSC has been a missionary in Pakistan since 1978.
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