“By carefully reading the programs of the political forces that are candidates to lead the country over the next five years, we have not been able to find a single line of commitment to change a system for taking care of people with dementia” He denounces it in an open letter to the health officials of parties Patrizia Spadin, president of the Italian Alzheimer’s disease association (Aima), which represents people with dementia and their families. With over one million over 65s suffering from dementia in Italy (2019 data) and more than 600 thousand people with Alzheimer’s, equal to about 20% of the population over 60, “this lack of attention is serious”, observes Spadin on the eve of the Day world dedicated to the disease. Especially since, “according to the data of the Higher Institute of Health – he adds – there are about 3 million people directly or indirectly involved in their assistance. If it is not a lack, it is at least a political error given that it is about citizens and voters, often women caregivers of working age, forced to multiply enormous efforts to reconcile life-work, which support (also) 80% of 15 billion euros in costs of sickness: a very anomalous figure for a social and health system that claims to be universal ”.
In the letter to the parties, Aima highlights that the last National Dementia Plan of 2014 has never been renewed. “Often people have indulged in abstract planning and disconnected from the reality of things, which is made up of non-standard services in the area, of fragmentation of the patient’s path, of unpreparedness for new possible evolutions on the treatment front”, urges Spadin.
In reiterating that “Aima is ready for discussion and proposals starting from September 26”, the day after the elections, the president of the Alzheimer’s patients association recalls that Aima and the Italian Society of Neurology (Sin) have already presented the “7 good reasons and 7 good proposals “not to forget Alzheimer’s, asking for” an investment plan for Alzheimer’s that makes it possible to “mend” the gaps that have built up over time, “a territorial health reform that includes Community Homes and Hospitals , protocols and ad hoc guidelines for the home management of patients and support and information for family caregivers ». “There is no need for revolutions. We need to do things right – admonishes Spadin – While in recent years opportunities for reform were lost, we forgot about hallucinatory or convulsive crises, delusions, aggression, apathy, aphasia, dysphagia, of infections. In short, we forgot the disease ».