Healthy, active geriatrics do not want to receive services or be “labelled as with being sick”. This is according to Dr Melissa DeHaarte, Coordinator of the government’s Elderly Health Programme. This group, the Coordinator said, are often financially stable and can afford visits the private medical institutions.
Guyana like other Caribbean countries, has an aging population, and Dr DeHaarte, is on a mission to ensure that the country’s senior citizens are fully integrated in the society to help mentor future generations.
The Elderly Health programme is part of the Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Unit but will be an independent unit with its own budget when the 2019 fiscal estimates are presented later this year by Finance Minister, Winston Jordan.
Men’s Health will also be a separate Unit following the 2019 Budget. This Unit will continue to be headed by Dr Dennis Bassier.
The Elderly Health Coordinator is currently finalizing the Unit’s strategic vision with backing from the Pan-American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) in collaboration with Cuban expert, Dr. Pedro Pons, a Geriatric Specialist attached to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC).
“We started working on the document in 2016 (and) the experts are expected to complete it and get it printed,” DeHaarte said.
She said that as part of the strategy “we have initiated conversations with the Nursing Council and the University of Guyana (UG) to have our Curriculum revised” for training nurses and healthcare workers, to ensure care for the elderly is given some prominence.
“We know as we age and get older, our needs become different, cannot be like others. We have made progress so far and we are trying to lay the out and wrap up the Curriculum. We are awaiting a full spectrum of what is available in the curriculum,” she said.
“We find that both doctors and nurses don’t have much knowledge on how to deal with the elderly: their nutrition, medications or surgery. It’s just a broad blanket knowledge, and therefore they are treated (as) any adult regardless of their age. As such there is need for specify knowledge in that area,” DeHaarte counselled.
She noted that currently, Guyana’s elderly population does not have a package of guaranteed services for themselves, and therefore healthcare services for the nation’s geriatrics “fall under the broad spectrum of chronic diseases.”
Because of longevity the national healthcare system is stretched trying to cater for an expanding growing population of sick and this is a threat to the economy “because you have to two sets of dependent groups: the young and very old.
Meanwhile, the productive population who are fit and can work and can pay taxes are getting smaller, Dr DeHaarte said.
The dwindling productive population can continue way into the future, DeHaarte warned, principally because more women are entering the workforce as professionals and these severely limit their number of pregnancies.
Consequently, we will continue to have a “smaller number of working persons in the population,” the Elderly Health Coordinator said.