By the way . . . we must improve care for our elderly

WHEN it comes to the care of older people, we need to make sure they are being looked after and not being ignored in this pandemic. I see or hear evidence of this daily — most recently I was told about a woman in her 70s found dead after a neighbour noticed her curtains remained closed for days.

There was no record of her having seen a doctor for years, so a post-mortem examination was mandatory. This revealed she’d likely had a heart attack.

She died alone without support or care. If she had experienced symptoms and sought medical attention, her death probably could have been prevented.

But she was on the autistic spectrum and in the past had been confused and frightened by the complexity of her GP’s recorded phone system, so she had given up trying to call.

You might wonder why friends didn’t help but, if any had called on her behalf, it’s likely they would have been told they didn’t have the authority to do so, as indeed I was when calling a practice on behalf of my 93-yearold neighbour after recognising she had heart failure.

I was told my only option was to register online as her carer, which I tried to do, only to be informed that, due to Covid, the website was not operational.

I’ve written to the GP and practice nurse but had no reply — a patient in heart failure all but abandoned. During the summer, António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, highlighted that ‘our response to COVID-19 must respect the rights and dignity of older people’. The main messages were: no person, young or older, is expendable. Older people have the same rights to life and death as everyone else. We need improved social support and smarter efforts to reach older people.

All social, economic and humanitarian responses must take the needs of older people fully into account. And finally, let’s not treat older people as invisible or powerless. Their voices and leadership count. May we remember all the above as winter approaches.