Fifteen elderly people, who were recently discharged from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, have nowhere to go. That’s because no relatives have come to take them home.
Expressing concern about the way some senior citizens continued to be abandoned at the QEH, Minister of Health Donville Inniss reminded Barbadians that the QEH was not a “residential care facility but rather an acute care facility”
“We continue to be challenged there with the number of persons who are discharged but remain in residence, costing taxpayers a considerable amount of money,” he said at a seminar on Alternative Interventions for Institutionalised Older Adults.
“That cost is growing in reflection by the number of bed spaces being taken up, nursing cots . . . Let me be honest with you and say that even sometimes you may have a challenge in getting an ambulance, and that is because the bed that is supposed to be in that ambulance is in Accident & Emergency holding an individual because someone has not collected that person who was discharged,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) Family and Community Health Advisor Betzabe Butron said healthy ageing was one of the priorities of the, and one of the areas in which they were providing technical assistance to the Eastern Caribbean countries.
She noted this part of the Caribbean was showing the fastest growth in the ageing population.
“Barbados is indeed one of the countries showing a very high growing speed of its ageing population. This situation creates various challenges for both health and social government institutions”. (CT)
