The UBUNTU Programme wishes to bring together and coordinate all actions aimed at ensuring dignity, respect for rights, and the physical, psychological, moral and material well-being of everyone who comes to our hospital and their families.
The aim of the Ubuntu Programme is to detect and act in a positive way to resolve or mitigate cases of vulnerability that affect our patients and that are or may be the cause of suffering, marginalisation, abuse or social exclusion.
These situations, which due to their severity should be the subject of special professional attention, in turn require an empathetic and committed approach with those who suffer them; they are often manifested in way that is not very evident and they are difficult to perceive, either due to the victim’s lack of knowledge of their own rights, out of fear, or due to being part of situations that could be considered embarrassing or shameful.
These problems are sometimes also derived from cognitive alterations. All of these situations should be particularly taken into account in children, adolescents and the elderly.
This programme includes:
- Detecting situations of precariousness, vulnerability and social exclusion.
- The identification of possible abuse in children, women (gender violence) and presumed situations of cognitive disability.
- Psychosocial frailty, developed by the Specialist Counselling and Support Team in home and community interventions.
- The active participation programme “La voz del Paciente” (The Voice of the Patient).
Ubuntu is a traditional African concept that comes from the Zulu and Xhosa languages, and constitutes an ethical rule that focuses on the loyalty between people and the relationships of fraternity and solidarity among them. This is a humanitarian principle of which Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu were great ambassadors in the reconstruction of the modern South Africa.
The Ubuntu philosophy can be summed up by saying that “nobody can be happy if happiness does not reign among those around him and of which he is a part”; we are all affected by the happiness or pain of other people and we cannot be indifferent to them.
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