Hospice care for the child with AIDS

Hospice care was established to provide palliative (i.e., noncurative) services for the dying and their families. The advent of the AIDS epidemic has posed a challenge to hospice care, particularly for the child dying of the disease, and has adapted to modified palliative services. Parents, with a child dying of AIDS, must deal with many issues of disclosing the disease status to the child, coping with the emotions of losing a child, and when and where to incorporate hospice services into the dying process. Optimizing home based *hospice* care involves; (1) Nutritional management, (2) Prevention of opportunistic infections, (3) Pain management, and (4) Protection of Non-HIV positive members of hospice care. For the dying, hospice strives to achieve a peaceful death and provide supportive intervention for the survivors.