To mark International AIDS Day, Life presents a powerful and intimate film into the work of a hospice in Zambia, a country on the front line in the world fight against HIV/AIDS. This is a country where one in five of the population are HIV-positive; most are under 40 years old. Two hundred people a day are dying of AIDS. All of the eleven million population has been touched by HIV/AIDS in some way.

The Mother of Mercy Hospice on the edge of the capital, Lusaka, was the first of its kind in Zambia. It has just 22 beds and was founded by an inspiring woman of extraordinary courage, a Polish nun called Sister Leonia.

Sister Leonia, founder of the Mother of Mercy Hospice.

“Our idea was just to build a simple shelter so people can die with dignity,” says Sister Leonia. “It’s not just about giving medication or an injection of morphine. You have to stay there to share the darkness, share all the doubts to share the worries and joys of our sick brothers and sisters.”

Two hundred people a day in Zambia die from HIV/AIDS. People are lucky to celebrate their thirty-sixth birthday. Zambia is one of the worst African countries affected, but by no means the only one. Controlling HIV/AIDS is one of the biggest challenges world health experts face. That’s why all the member countries of the United Nations have pledged to “reverse” the spread of the disease as one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals - a global ambition the international community hopes to achieve by 2015.

Clinical nurse Cromwell Sialonga.

The Hospice clinical officer Cromwell Sialonga deals with death almost every day. “Last week we had seven, that’s seven deaths last week, that’s really draining, emotionally draining because they should not happen like that,” he says. Poverty is part of the problem, because many patients are weakened by malnutrition.

“We are dealing with the very poor,” says Cromwell. “Currently HIV drugs are very expensive for Zambians, but if they were made cheaper they would still need to get enough food to help themselves.”

A relative comforts a patient.

New patient John Mukuka is in a bad way. He has all the symptoms of TB, the main cause of death for people with HIV in Zambia. Most of his close family suffered from TB, many died. But he’s worse because of lack of nutritious food.

As Cromwell explains: “When you keep the patient for one or two months you come to discover it’s all a result of hunger. When we actually feed them up that tends to help, so really the care they receive in the hospice setting tends to help to pull them through.”

A lot of care work also goes on outside the Hospice - some people are too ill to make the journey themselves. There are about five hundred people based in local compounds or villages who get regular visits from Sister Leonia.

Sister Leonia takes sick Christine to the hospice.

Sister Leonia visits three-year-old Christine, who is very sick. “In these eleven years I have seen a lot of babies dying. It’s very sad, no one should suffer like that,” she says.

Christine’s mother comes to the hospice to be with her, but in a few days she dies. Sister Leonia explains how she copes: “I knew we would lose Christine. Although there was a bit of hope that she would pick up again she didn’t. What, how I deal with such thing? I put everything before God and leaving it with him.”

But sometimes there is good news. A baby boy whose parents have died of AIDS proves to be HIV-negative. And John Mukuka is soon sufficiently well to go home.

John Mukuka, admitted with TB, but soon well enough to go home.

The hospice founded by Sister Leonia plays a small but significant role in the local battle against HIV. As she says: “We have to be here. Ours is on the frontline. Doing whatever is possible to live here without hope – there’s always hope, though sometime it’s hidden somewhere.”

TRANSCRIPT Read the full transcript of The Hospice