Slovenia to build second hospice house

Slovenia's second hospice house will be built in the Novo Mesto area after eight municipalities in the southeast of the country agreed to work on the project together.

The facility could take in its first residents in two years, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.

The new establishment will provide palliative care to people who can no longer be treated but still need professional support, symptom relief and dignified living. The region definitely needs such a facility, Novo Mesto Mayor Gregor Macedoni said after the cooperation agreement was signed.

Located in the village of Lešnica, the hospice house will have ten rooms for just as many residents and could be expanded if necessary.

Fifteen municipalities in the southeast were invited to join the project and eight opted for it - Črnomelj, Mirna Peč, Novo Mesto, Semič, Straža, Škocjan, Šmarješke Toplice and Žužemberk. Others can still join at a later stage, Macedoni said.

At the beginning of next year, they will start preparing the paperwork required for the project. Currently, there is a building located on the land where the hospice house will be built, and it will be demolished to make room for the new facility.

The existing house used to be the home of renowned surgeon Marija Masten, who donated the building to the municipality decades ago to serve the general welfare of the local community. For many years, the building housed a kindergarten, but after the childcare centre moved to a new location, right next to the Otočec primary school, the decision was made to build a hospice there.

The president of the regional committee of the Hospice Association Jani Kramar expressed his gratitude to the municipalities that took on the project, noting that the happy news coincided with the organisation's 30th anniversary. He is glad to see the locals have welcomed the project.

There is currently one hospice house in the country, located in Ljubljana and run by the organisation Ljubhospic, and another one is also in the works in Maribor. Meanwhile, Italy has 240 hospice houses, Kramar said.

The announcement comes after an assisted dying law was rejected in a referendum in November. The campaign in the run-up to the vote heard the opponents say that efforts to promote palliative care should be prioritised instead of allowing terminally ill, mentally competent adults who experience unbearable suffering the right to end their lives with medical assistance.

Meanwhile, supporters of the law argued that these two things do not cancel each other out.

Photo: Katja Kodba/STA