Runcie urges hospices

to nurse AIDS victims
THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury has urged the nation's hospice organisations to open their doors and offer their services to terminally ill AIDS victims.
Hospices must look at the whole range of pastoral and medical issues raised by AIDS, Dr Runcie said at a con fernce held last week by Help the Hospices, a voluntary organisation.
The Archbishop, who went on to praise the hospice movement as "humane" and "helpful", took over presidency of Help the Hospices last Friday from Dame Cicely Saunders.
The Archbishop's speech came in the wake of a statement made last month by a member of the Royal College of Nursing which attacked the movement's record on AIDS' care. The College's advisor on oncology nursing, Richard Wells, told the Catholic Herald that he knew of "several cases where AIDS patients were turned away from hospices".