He maintained that some rooms have been allocated at the ministries for this purpose. Furthermore he has appealed to the Member of Parliament for Cape Coast to support in the provision of health equipment in making the aged clinic operational.
The Member of Parliament for Cape Coast Hon .Ebo Barton Odro said it has been his dream to see aged clinic operational in Cape Coast to take care of the old. He said that for the past two years he has been organising health check-ups for the aged. In last year's outreach programme more than two thousand people aged seventy and above benefited from the programme. Some of them were registered on the National Health Insurance Scheme.
While city hospitals have become much-publicised battlegrounds between police and striking health workers, stories of desperate patients are quietly playing out at rural clinics. These patients, most of them elderly people suffering from chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes and asthma, say their graves are getting desperate because the public servants' strike makes it impossible for them to get their medication.
There is currently almost no institutional care for elderly people and no nursing homes in Ghana, despite those above the age of 64 representing an estimated 3.6% of the population, equalling 854,156 people. Hospitals also do not provide separate clinics for elderly patients, and most health training institutions do not include suitable training for age specific diseases in their curriculums, meaning many doctors lack the expertise to offer adequate care and help.
Despite a draft policy put to the cabinet in March 2003, the government has never created a policy on the aged. The issue of care for the elderly is becoming increasingly significant due to the rising life expectancy of Ghanaians, which has increased by 8 years since 1970, reaching 57 years in 2009, and which is expecting to keep on rising; in addition to this, the probability of reaching 65 is also approximately 50%. These facts combined with the 2.4% annual population increase in Ghana means that care for the elderly is a subject which cannot be ignored or overlooked, and which must have steps taken to resolve it in order to meet the needs of an older population.
The announcement of the aged clinic in Cape Coast is therefore a significant step forward for the care of Ghana's elderly population, showing interest from the government for the first time, and hope that this issue will be recognised more widely now and in the future. Before this, the only services available were those of home health care companies, such as Paradyse Homecare, which consist of doctors regularly visiting sick elderly patients.
The importance of specialised health care for the aged is because of the patience and time that many elderly people require, and the extra help that some need to come to hospital appointments. A specialised clinic would be created specifically for the needs of the elderly, and so would be much more beneficial for the patients concerned, who could receive high-quality and reliable care and attention. Some aged people also find it difficult to look after themselves adequately on their own, and so would gain considerably from having intense, personal care. There are also some conditions and diseases that are mainly exclusive to old age, such as dementia, which would be better treated in a clinic which is well educated in the health issues of the elderly.
In countries such as America, where the life expectancy is 78.4 years, aged clinics and nursing homes are very common, with about 16,000 in total, and 1.5 million clients receiving care. The United Kingdom, Australia and many European countries are also among the places in the world which offer in general a variety of specialised care for the aged. Most of these countries also have fairly high life expectancy rates, which perhaps explain the prominent amount of nursing homes and aged clinics.
Hopefully the establishment of an aged clinic in Cape Coast is a sign that the needs of Ghana's increasingly aged population are being heard and recognised by those in power, so that the elderly can receive the appropriate health care and attention that they require.
-Frances Black (Projects Abroad)
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