The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

SANDILANDS Rehabilitation Centre has experienced an increase in admission requests for senior people.

Dr Indira Minus-Grimes, the consultant and director of geriatric services at Sandilands, noted yesterday that this comes as the country deals with the global trend of an ageing population. “We have a decline, a parallel decline, in persons, the number of persons who can care for them, especially when they become very complex with their medical illnesses and therefore requiring long term health care placement such as in geriatric hospital,” she said yesterday during a tour of Sandilands.

She said the facility had not finished compiling statistics for the year and couldn’t give specifics.

“The medical issues of older persons can get quite complex as they get older because they can develop multiple medical illnesses and then geriatric syndromes like dementia, depression, complications from fall,” she said. “This can become quite overwhelming for their family and loved ones, and so they seek the assistance of long term care here.”

In October, Health and Wellness Minister Dr Michael Darville said the government is taking “serious steps” in addressing the care of the elderly. He said officials are seeing more elderly patients being left behind at hospitals, with loved ones failing to pick them up.

“We are in communication with social services as well as our geriatric facility, and I want the Bahamian people to know that there is some indications of a breakdown in the moral fibre of the country, where for the first time, our loved ones, the elderly who have contributed our society, are being abandoned by their loved ones,” he said.

“The government is taking serious steps to look at a better way how we could address the care of our elderly and also expand the geriatric services so that in the event that the complications with illness and the ability to treat elderly patients can be addressed from our geriatric hospital.”