A Dios
Marcos Azulay
Since its foundation in 2002, St. Camillus Hospice (HSC) has become the reference and spokesperson for hospice care in Argentina, assisting since its outset more than 2000 people diagnosed with a terminal illness (life expectancy of fewer than six months) and accompanying their families and relatives without any ethnic, cultural or religious discrimination.
Inspired by the spirit of Mother Teresa, it pays special attention to those who lack financial resources or those who do not have a family environment that can support them. Its services are free of charge, so it is maintained thanks to donations and the pro bono work of 200 volunteers.
In a culture where death is a taboo and a mystery to which we turn our backs, where medicine sees it as a defeat and euthanasia is presented almost as the only solution to the pain of not knowing how to go through this process, St. Camillus Hospice proposes a society in which no one lives their end of life in abandonment and without the required human care necessary to have a dignified death.
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In March 2019, I made contact with the HSC. I intended to record testimonies of people at the end of life. A few months later, I started volunteering, an activity I still do today.
In 2013 I was diagnosed with cancer, and in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic and working as a volunteer with all the difficulties that COVID brought to the health system, I had a heart attack that led me, for the second time in these few years, to be close to death.
