Discussions on dementia important

AS the population ages, President of the Barbados Elderly Care Association (BECA), Maureen Ward, believes that the public needs to be more educated about dementia.

Her comment came during BECA’s first Home Owners Seminar of the year, which was held at Co-operators General Insurance yesterday morning. To help spread awareness, Ward revealed that BECA planned to host two workshops this year that will be geared towards creating awareness on dementia.

“The first workshop would be in June and the second one in September,” she said.

Ward noted, “We think a lot of persons in Barbados really need to understand dementia and how to take care of a person who has dementia, how it affects the person that actually suffers from dementia and how it affects the carer and their families.”

She revealed that Barbados has one of the oldest populations in the world and noted that “the longer you live, the more likely you are to get dementia”. Therefore, she deems it paramount to create more awareness surrounding dementia.

“Just as you have diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure, dementia needs to become one of the more talked about topics to spread awareness,” the BECA president said.

She expressed that it was her hope that persons made a special effort to attend these workshops, especially persons who work in nursing homes and senior citizen homes.

Ward revealed that in addition to educating the public about dementia, the workshops are also meant to help improve the quality of care that the nurses and carers deliver to their patients.

“We have been working to improve knowledge and skills of those working in homes with seminars such as this, that we try to do every year, and workshops to caregivers,” she said.

The president also noted that they conducted a one-year course, which was meant to train persons on how to take care of the elderly. At the end of this year-long course, Ward said that graduates were given certificates from the BECA as well as the Nursing Associa-tion. (CLF)