About our foundation
Following in the spirit of the international hospice movement, our hospice activity focuses on alleviating the physical and mental suffering of incurable – primarily cancer patients who can only be given symptomatic care with our primary objectives being a humane approach and the protection of human dignity. Our aim is to reduce the patients’ pain and symptoms, to relieve their mental anguish and help them to experience the highest quality of life as well as to maintain their best possible physical and intellectual faculties, while helping relatives by reducing the burdens placed upon them by the illness of their loved ones and the process of bereavement.
Death and dying are generally taboo subjects in Hungarian society. Even the word hospice is something people often do not understand or it has negative connotations for them. This therefore requires the constant dissemination of information and continual efforts to shape people’s attitudes in order for the work of the hospice to be recognised by society and the healthcare profession as a necessary form of care provision.
Debrecen, the centre of the Northern Great Plains region, the Gyula Kenézy Hospital and Clinic, as well as Debrecen University – the only institution in the region and its greater area with a Medical Science Faculty – provide an excellent foundation for becoming a prominent base for palliative care in Hungary.
As a result of several years of preparatory work, the Debrecen Hospice House Foundation was established in spring 2015.
Our first and most important in autumn of 2016 achievement was the setting up of an in-patients ward, while maintaining our successful network of home nursing. The human resources base for our care is mainly provided by the staff of Kenézy Hospital and the doctors of the Debrecen University Clinic enrolled in a medical licencing examination programme. Using donations, sponsorship funds and local government support, we wish to establish a palliative centre under the name Narcissus Debrecen Hospice House on the premises of Kenézy Hospital.
