ThembaCare Grabouw provides a 7-bed hospice in-patient facility for adults who are terminally ill and whose lives have been devastated by HIV/AIDS and TB. It is the only overnight medical care in the town. To complement the in-patient facility ThembaCare also has a team of community care workers who visit various discharged patients and other referrals in their homes every morning.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

June News


Winter in Grabouw is finally here and with it the freezing cold mornings, evenings and rain. June for ThembaCare Grabouw has been a busy month with a visiting volunteer team from the US going out into the community with our ‘Palliative Care Angels’, in order to experience firsthand the amazing work that the ladies do. This is usually arranged by Village of Hope for the volunteers so that they can have a bigger perspective of the work that is offered to our patients in the community of Grabouw.

We need to update our building to comply with fire and safety recommendations. Corridors need widening, doors need moving, ramps need building. There is a lot to do! Work has started in full vigour, with our area director, Tim Walker, overseeing it all. There has been a lot of traffic in and out of the facility as a result. Many thanks to Tim and the Gerald Wright Trust for making this possible!!

Work also started this month on our long awaited multishade for the ThembaCare stoop and front entrance. This is for the benefit of our In Patients. Many thanks go to Appletiser and our funding manager, Amanda, for eventually making this happen for us. Hopefully, by next month we should have pictures of what the completed work looks like.

Our prayers still this month go out to one of our In Patients who has been very ill. She managed to give us a smile this month and that just gave all of us who care for her some glimmer of hope!!

We would also like to request prayer for one of our teenage patients in community. The young girl who lives with her Aunt left Grabouw abruptly without any referral for continuing the young teenager’s HIV treatment. Our prayer is that all the hard work that our ladies have invested in this young girl will not be lost and that her Aunt will find a way of ensuring that she remains on her much needed life saving treatment.