This New Year, HM The Queen has recognised the achievements of one of the most remarkable Great Britons in Romania. Graham Perolls is made a Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in the New Year’s Honours List, an order of chivalry reserved for those who render extraordinary service in a foreign country. Graham has been doing just that in Romania for the last 22 years.
When Graham came to Romania in 1992 he brought with him the hospice movement. This was founded in the UK in the 1950s around the simple and powerful idea that people have the right to end their days in comfort and in dignity. In Brasov, Graham found doctors and nurses willing to take up this cause and together they founded ‘Casa Sperantei’ – the Hospice of Hope – to provide palliative care to terminally ill children and adults in the city.
From Brasov, the hospice movement has spread to cities across Romania and elsewhere in eastern Europe. Casa Sperantei has become a training centre for over 12,000 hospice staff from Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Moldova and as far as Kyrgyzstan. It has partnered with the Ministry of Health to develop a national programme for palliative care in Romania. And in recent years Graham has been working on his most ambitious project yet – a new Hospice for Bucharest.
Thanks to the incredible fund raising efforts of the Hospice team, and the generosity of thousands of sponsors – corporate and individual – in Romania, the UK and the USA, Graham’s vision has gradually taken shape, and now the building is finished. I visited it one evening before Christmas, just as the builders were handing it over to Casa Sperantei .
The hospice is an oasis of peace in the heart of a busy city, located beside a lake and within earshot of the bells of the Plumbuita Monastery. Its rooms are fitted with the latest hospital beds, fully accessible for those in wheelchairs, and complete with a chapel, a sitting room and terrace for patients, and a playroom for children.
The campaign continues to raise the remaining funds for running costs so that it can open its doors to its first patients in the New Year. Then Bucharest will have its own, fully equipped modern hospice, and the hospice movement will be firmly rooted in Romania’s capital city.
My congratulations to Graham Perolls and the whole team at Casa Sperantei on receiving this distinction from Her Majesty The Queen, and my thanks to them for bringing hope to many in Romania this New Year.