Respite Care is an extension to our Home-based care service. As the HIV/AIDS pandemic progressed in our province, despite a comprehensive home based care project being in operation, we still found many patients were dying alone in dreadful conditions.

Home-based care (HBC) is definitely the answer to large scale HIV/AIDS care in this context, however, HBC relies on our caregivers and nurses giving backup/support to the primary caregiver, who is a family member. In many households, there are no longer caregivers at home because so many adults have died. Subsequently, patients are either left on their own all day or a child has to give up attending school in order to become the caregiver. The youngest caregiver we have experienced was a girl of 5 years who was endeavouring to look after her ill mother. To combat this, a respite unit was opened in February 2006 from rented space at the Hillcrest Provincial Hospital.

The hospital has subsequently reclaimed the ward, which has forced us to build on our own property and on Tuesday 21 October 2008 we moved the first patients into the new unit.

The unit is a home from home run by 14 caregivers with registered nurse backup where patients can be cared for in a loving environment. Patients receive a bed, food and whatever medicines they have been prescribed and either recover from acute illness or die with dignity and in peace.

An unexpected outcome of the respite unit is the amount of patients that have been admitted to die but with care and support have recovered enough to be enlisted onto an antiretroviral program and are now living fulfilled lives within the community.

We desperately need support to keep it going. The unit has a 25 bed capacity but a lack of funds means we are currently only able to run a 16 bed unit. We have a long waiting list and sadly many patients die before we are able to accommodate them.

We are currently in the process of introducing two wonderful initiatives to help us finance the Respite Unit’s operational cost to its full 25 beds potential.

• Othandweni Friends for dinner
• Adopt a bed scheme, a fixed financial commitment for a period of time to take care of the funding of a bed in our Respite Unit

To clarify the financial situation we have broken down the costs of keeping a patient in the unit per bed. This cost covers all the expenses accumulated during the patients stay in our unit.

Cost per bed	Per day	Per week	Per month	Per year
In Rand	150	1050	4500	54.000
In Euro*	12.50	87.50	375	4500

(*Exchange Rate E1/R12)

From previous years experience we are able to estimate the occupation rate of 15-16 patients per bed/ per annum. We are calculating for a budget that allows us to accommodate those needs.

In simple math; if we could find 750 generous people/families/ businesses to pledge R150 per month we would secure the operation of all so desperately needed 25 beds.

Thank you to all our sponsors and donors to help us building the Othandweni “A Place of Love” Respite Unit and the Victor Daitz Positive Health Centre

Thank You

Click here for a list of Donors for the Respite Unit