A former paramedic takes terminally ill people on their last journey and makes their wishes come true

60-year-old Kees Veldboer from the Netherlands, the founder Stichting Ambulance Wens or, roughly translated, the Wish Grant Ambulance Foundation, has already provided more than 14,000 terminally ill people with their final journey in a specially designed ambulance that operates even during the Covid-19 pandemic. Through his Veldboer Foundation it takes patients to those places they would like to see again, or where they would like to say their final goodbyes.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has introduced an "intelligent quarantine", where only those activities that require direct contact, such as e.g. barbers and hairdressers. Citizens are advised to stay at home, but are allowed to go out if they stay at least one and a half meters apart. But since many people just decide to stay at home, Veldboer has the opportunity to give patients despite the current situation makes last wishes come true. He said he is currently experiencing unprecedented demand from dying patients asking him to take them to blooming fields with tulips.

Veldboer told the Daily Mail: "We fulfill wishes even during the pandemic. Since we are not in complete quarantine, we can make them happen. We can go to open spaces, to gardens with flowers, to empty zoos, to a park, many people want to see the sea. This is not prohibited. As long as there are open spaces and there are not many people around and the patient only has one or two people with him, everything is fine.”

In addition to trips to nature, immobile patients also want to said goodbye to, for example, your horse, or apply for a trip to your boat, barge, sailboat.

Veldboer got the original idea for the foundation while transferring patients from one hospital to another. To make the time pass faster, he asked the patients if there was any place they would like to go, to which they told him they would like to see the port of Rotterdam one last time, which he complied. A year later, he founded a foundation, which from then on takes terminally ill people on their last (earthly) journey.