Hospice Movement's care of the dying patient

As the person who first spoke in a public forum of the need to set up a Hospice service in Malta in June 1987 and subsequently chaired a steering committee which led to the establishment of a Hospice Movement in these islands, I was most interested in the article by Jurgen Abela (May 17).

Dr Abela very ably outlined the development of palliative care as a medical specialty and the role that the late Dame Cicely Saunders played in bringing worldwide recognition to the importance of this specialty in the modern world now clamouring for the right to euthanasia. Dr Saunders, whom I had the privilege to meet, was brought up in an agnostic household but was converted to the Evangelical Anglican Church when she finished her training as a nurse in St Thomas's in London.

It was at this stage that, encouraged by David Barrett, a consultant surgeon, she took up the special care of dying cancer patients, and first put forward the concept of "total pain" which such subjects had to endure.

As the Elizabethan dramatist Webster put it, man's entrance onto the world stage is pretty standard but "...death hath ten thousand several doors for men to take their exits" and it is often the particular, protracted, painful passage of the cancer patient that calls for fortitude on the part of the victim and competence and compassion of a high order on the part of his or her carers. Thus and inevitably the special and spiritual dimension of such care emerges.

The Hospice Movement Malta freely dispenses such care involving scores of professionals and volunteers under a wise management and we are all grateful for it.