Elder abuse

Any situation in which an elderly person is denied the right kind of care and food and where the basic necessities are lacking can be deemed an abusive one. Neglect of the elderly is one form of elder abuse and unfortunately it is a fact of life for too many seniors in Guyana.

Accusations of such neglect have recently been levelled at administrators of the Palms Geriatric Home on Brickdam. But before that, the abject neglect of four very old women who are barely surviving at the deplorably rundown Chase’s Indigent Home as reported on by this newspaper in March this year, scarcely caused a ripple.

At both Chase’s and the Palms the physical conditions of the building are less than desirable, though the situation is worse at the former, which is privately owned. The article published in March described such conditions at Chase’s as: residents fetching water to flush the out of order toilet; leaking roof; rotted floorboards; no security; market vendors storing moveable stalls in the passageway; vagrants using the open bottom flat as a toilet among other things. It should be noted that the average age of the four women still resident in this hellhole is about 80 and they cook and fend for themselves. The oldest is 92 years old.

In the case of the Palms, which is a government-owned and run institution, staff members complained that “the flooring rotting… the toilets need fixing, the cupboards falling apart.” In addition, they lamented that the residents there do not receive a balanced diet. “The food they eat is poor and these are the people who need the right diet,” one staff member said. Another spoke of rotten chairs and tables adding that “Even the residents’ plates and teacups are flaky with holes.”

In addition to all of this, the majority of the residents of the Palms have some form of illness. Some are incapacitated and therefore need round-the-clock nursing care. But the institution suffers from a dire shortage of staff and the ones who are there are grossly underpaid and overworked, conditions that formed part of their protest last week.

It should be noted too that one of the staff members who spoke to this newspaper, complained about a lack of a risk allowance, which she felt was absolutely necessary considering that some of the Palms residents were prone to violence. This, of course, points to the presence of Alzheimer’s and dementia, the incidence of which have been rising among the elderly and not-so-elderly populations globally. Nursing staff and care aides dealing with these conditions in the elderly require special training. Clearly, this has not been afforded to the staff at the Palms. There is also medication that can lessen and curb violent episodes in seniors afflicted by Alzheimer’s, but it would need to be prescribed by trained doctors and also to be made available in country. It is not the fault of the staff of the Palms nor its administrators that many basic things are unavailable and remain unattended to. This is a government-run institution and one which should be leading the way in the care and treatment of the elderly. Instead, it has been an institution which has always had a stigma attached to it, and this has worsened over the years.

It is a fact that many older people who should be living, if not in homes at least in environments where they can access care easily, refuse to leave their homes, even when they can barely manage to care for themselves. This has led to many of them being preyed upon by criminal elements and in recent times several elderly women who lived alone have been murdered in their homes.

In response to ongoing criticism that it was doing next to nothing for seniors, the last PPP/C administration appointed a new National Commission on the Elderly in July 2012. The previous commission had been in place since 1999, but had hardly met and this recent one seemed bent on following in its footsteps, though to its credit it had seen a resuscitation of observances for the month of the elderly in October. It must be noted though that our senior citizens must live year round and require more than a raise of the hat to them once a year. Such expenditure as would provide adequate and decent living conditions for Guyana’s growing elderly population must be budgeted for and given priority. To do anything less would be to continue the pattern of abuse which surely indicts us as a society.

It has been noted before in this column that the majority of people in the legislature would fall under the titles ‘senior’ or ‘elderly.’ While they might hardly find themselves in the Palms or any of the privately run homes, surely they can find empathy for those of their peers who do.