Bogota, January 2018. This Wednesday, January 17 at DoubleTree by Hilton, the Sanitas Foundation will present the Bogotá Contigo, Ciudad Compasiva program whose objective is to promote in the creation of health support networks that provide accompaniment to those people who are at the end of their lives life or are going through chronic illnesses.

Around the world, about 20 million people die each year in isolation and with no one by their side to make them feel better. With the purpose of transforming this reality, promoting the creation of support networks for families, neighborhoods, communities and cities, the Sanitas Foundation has joined the global initiative "All with you" (Todos Contigo, by its name in Spanish) of the New Health Foundation, which has already been implemented and is currently working in cities such as Seville, Pamplona, Gexto, Vitoria and Badajoz, in Spain; Limerick and Londonderry, in Ireland; Kerala, in India; Buenos Aires, in Argentina; and Río Grande, in Brazil, among others.

The Bogotá Contigo, Ciudad Compasiva Program, has as its main purposes to sensitize Colombians, and in particular Bogota citizens, to the importance of care, accompaniment and compassion; promote the development of research that allows us to understand how we accompany and care for each other in our culture; and train both health professionals and families, communities and cities on issues of care, grief management and support in the disease.

Through the Bogotá Contigo, Ciudad Compasiva Program, the Sanitas Foundation seeks to promote "compassion", understood as the capacity that each person has to "mobilize" to help people and families of all socioeconomic backgrounds that need accompaniment at the end of their lives or while surviving with chronic diseases.

The work fronts of the Sanitas Foundation and its Bogotá Contigo, Ciudad Compasiva Program include institutions such as schools, universities, churches, community associations, foundations, State agencies or private companies that can be "collaborating centers"; awareness-raising actions and joint work with expert professionals in health, palliative care, social sciences and community development; groups of people who offer care and companionship on a voluntary basis through social gatherings; and institutions that provide care for people with advanced disease, high dependency or who are in the final stage of life.

Leading these actions in Bogota, the Sanitas Foundation is thus articulated to this social movement and to the network Colombia Contigo, Ciudades Compasivas, which has been promoted by the New Health Foundation and which seeks to create a large global network of compassionate experts and collaborators.

Institutions such as the "Cuidados Paliativos" Foundation (Palliative Care Foundation, by its meaning in English), in Cali, the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, in Medellín, and the Pallium Colombia Foundation, in Fusagasugá belong to this initiative in Colombia, with which the Sanitas Foundation develops collaborative work.

The presentation ceremony this Wednesday will take place within the framework of the workshop Introduction to the psychology of compassion in the organizational and health context, dictated by the Chilean Gonzalo Brito Pons, clinical psychologist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, doctor in Psychology by the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, Director of the Compassion Cultivation Instructor Training Program, Compassion Institute, USA and Nirakara, Madrid. Trained at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at the Stanford University School of Medicine (CCARE), being the first instructor certified to teach the Training in Compassion Cultivation program (ECC, by its acronym in Spanish).