My name is Louise Forsyth and I am the Clinical Nurse Specialist for Palliative Care in the Community at Capital & Coast District Health Board. This means I work with the District Nurses who provide the day to day “hands on” Palliative Care for patients in their own homes.

Palliative Care is an approach that improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual. We work in partnership with Mary Potter Hospice and many of our patients and families have moderate to high complexity of palliative care needs.

Together with a group of 7 other Palliative Care Nurses from throughout New Zealand, I am planning to travel to Kenya in July 2016 to Kimbilio Hospice, Eldoret, Western Kenya.

Kimbilo Hospice is a 24 bed in- patient and out- patient hospice that cares for adults and children and this care extends to patients in the community.

The services are run by Living Room Ministries International (www.LivingRoomInternational.org), an American organisation whose mission is “to provide dignity and quality of life to people in Kenya affected by HIV/AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses through holistic care and education”.

We will be working as volunteer nurses in Kimbilio Hospice.

At this stage we are planning to spend a month in Kenya and we will be using leave from our employment in New Zealand. Depending upon the success of my fundraising efforts I would like to extend the working time by at least another month which will mean taking unpaid leave as well.

I am also planning to collect and send clothing and medical supplies to Kimbilio hospice.

This trip does have significant personal meaning to me as I was born in Kenya and lived there for the first five years of my life until Kenya gained independence in 1963. My father and my grandfather both worked for the British government in the Colonial Service there.