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04 Sunday, March 11, 2012 www.thenational.ae The National
Elderly patients in need of special care praise medics’ visits
Manal Ismail
dubai // Seven people crowded into Sayed Al Hashemi’s room, trying to convince him to get out of bed for a health assessment.
For 45 minutes he lay there, con-fused and refusing to budge.
Then the 87-year-old sprang out of bed and everyone in the room, including his daughter, Maryam, and four medical professionals, applauded him.
A physiotherapist, Iftikhar Shalla, took the elderly man by the hand and guided him to his chair in the living room, where a geriatrician
and a nurse conducted a full ex-amination.
“It’s a full house,” said an excited Mr Al Hashemi. “What’s the occa-sion? Can you tell me how many years I have left?”
“A very long time,” replied his daughter. “Why are you asking this baba? You’re still a young man.”
As he recited poetry about his fondness for coffee and sang love songs to his wife, who was sitting beside him, it was hard to believe that Mr Al Hashemi had a worry in the world.
But numerous medical complica-tions afflict this vibrant Emirati, preventing him from leaving his home in Al Rashidiya and sharing his cheerful spirit with others.
Dementia, bronchitis and hyper-tension are just a few of the chal-lenges that Mr Al Hashemi lives with every day. This makes him a
perfect candidate for the elderly home care service launched by Du-bai Health Authority in January.
Ms Al Hashemi said the service has eased the stress involved in giv-ing her father the specialised care he needs.
“I used to take him to the com-munity centre for the elderly,” she said. “We’d have to jump around from doctor to doctor.
“It used to be so difficult and he’d get very tired in the process. This is much more comfortable for both of us.”
The visits also provide an oppor-tunity her father, a retired trades-man, to engage with members of the community.
“He cannot leave home, so he feels so happy when he sees all these people around him,” said Ms Al Hashemi. “It makes him feel cherished and loved.” She added
that if the medical team included an eye doctor and a dentist, the service would be perfect.
“Like this he’d truly never have to leave the house for a doctor’s ap-pointment again,” she said.
The service is the ideal approach in a community where taking care of one’s own is so highly valued, said Ms Al Hashemi.
But she believes that families should not leave all the work to the carers.
“It’s truly a miracle how life is a cycle. We must be patient with our parents as they age,” she said.
“They showed us extreme pa-tience and care when we were young, even in our most unattrac-tive states.
“We must also reciprocate the same unconditional love.”
Home helpers a lifeline for housebound
Fareed Rahman
dubai // Children playing with laser pointers may be posing a threat to air traffic safety, says the Emirates Authority for Standardi-sation and Metrology.
Lasers are often found in toys, but can also be on key chains and lighters. Those who play with the gadgets in areas surrounding Du-bai International Airport could pose a lethal distraction to pilots during landing and take-off.
Certain lasers can cause tempo-rary blindness or permanent loss of sight when shined directly into eyes.
The General Civil Aviation Au-thority (GCAA), which approached Emirates Authority for Stand-ardisation and Metrology (EASM) to consider banning their sale, would not say how many pilots had complained of laser play af-fecting them in the cockpit.
However, nearly 60 cases were reported in Finland last year and there have been reports of lasers affecting air traffic in the United States.
Mohammed Al Badri, the acting director general of EASM, said they had recently met with au-thorities from customs, the GCAA
and Dubai Municipality to discuss the need to develop standards to monitor and control the import and circulation of lasers.
“The lasers in these devices may even burn the skin and this is why we at the authority, as well as oth-er competent authorities, need to pay attention to this type of de-vice,” Mr Badri said.
The next task, he said, was to de-velop criteria and specifications to classify laser devices intended for public use. The specifications would include the laser’s power of radiation, wavelength, the amount in watts of electrical out-put and instructions of use.
“According to these standards and specifications, the terms of import and usage would be de-fined. Warning stickers would be added to each device detailing technical information as well as the precautionary measures to be taken upon usage.”
After implementing the new ruling, he said, no laser devices would be allowed into the coun-try without test certificates from internationally accredited labo-ratories and stickers that describe their specifications.
Laser pointers are a ‘danger to air traffic’
theemiratesHealth care for the elderly
Case study
They will tour 22 countries to educate on dangers of litter
Vesela Todorova
dubai // A couple planning to drive through Europe and Asia to urge people to use less plastic are just a month away from taking their mes-sage to 22 countries.
David and Theresa Wernery, who are behind the Plastic Not So Fan-tastic campaign, are set to leave the UAE by the end of next month.
Their adventure will involve driv-ing the entire route, sleeping in a rooftop tent and bathing in a makeshift shower cabin.
“We have been talking about it for so long, it is good to know we will hit the road soon,” said Mr Wernery, 35.
The couple announced their plans in June and have since been preparing for the journey, plan-ning their route and modifying their Ford F150 pick-up. They originally planned to drive 160,000 kilometres through more than 50 countries, a voyage that was supposed to take 18 months and would have required shipping the vehicle to various locations.
But their plans have changed af-
ter they failed to secure cash spon-sorship. They are using their own resources for the trip.
They will now drive the route in stages. Part one will take them through Iran, Azerbeijan, Georgia, Turkey and much of Europe. Af-ter visiting Britain, they will drive through Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Ukraine. They will then contin-ue through Russia and Kazakhstan, finishing in Turkmenistan and Iran.
“We will be back here in October,” said Mr Wernery.
The couple have been promoting their campaign since leaving their jobs in January. Mr Wernery, a Ger-man, was a lawyer, while Mrs Wern-ery, 28, who is German-British but was born and raised in Abu Dhabi, worked in investment banking. They have been holding lectures on the dangers of plastic litter.
“We are doing two to three pres-entations a week,” said Mr Wern-ery. Their audiences range from school children and university stu-dents to company employees.
For their lectures the couple use information and props supplied by Mr Wernery’s father, Dr Ulrich Wernery, scientific director of the Central Veterinary Research Labo-ratory in Dubai.
Over the years, Dr Wernery has tracked hundreds of domestic and wild animals that have died after eating plastic litter. The plastic calcifies in the animals’ stomachs, creating huge lumps that eventu-ally cause a slow and painful death.
At lectures, the couple shows one such lump weighing 35 kilograms found in a cow.
“People are all gobsmacked this is plastic and it has all come from one animal,” said Mr Wernery.
He and his wife are also organis-ing a clean-up at a desert site near Dubai with the help of several com-panies – Volkswagen, the Rotana Hotel Management Corporation and the technology company Sie-mens – on March 17.
“I am expecting more than 300 people,” said Thomas Tapken, area vice president, Dubai and Northern Emirates, for Rotana. “Hopefully after two or three hours we will clean a large area and this will be the first step of showing our commitment to the environment.”
Couple’s long drive to cut plastic waste
Population over 60
0
25,000
50,000
2020(projected)
201020051995
0
12,500
25,000
201120052000
Countrywide – nationals Dubai – nationals and non-nationals
Source: National Bureau of Statistics, Dubai Statistics Centre, projected figure from the Ministry of Health
Getting older
Theresa and David Wernery have accumulated all the supplies they think they will need for their expedition. Jeff Topping / The National
Family and carers work together to ensure Sayed Al Hashemi, centre, is well taken care of at his home in Dubai. Above, Sayed’s daughter Maryam, second from left, speaks with her father as he shakes hands with his physiotherapist, Iftikhar Shalla, last week. Jaime Puebla / The National
earth matters
→ Population, continued from a1
“If the person has just one child, they are not accepted,” said Fawzya Taresh Rabee, director of the fam-ily development department at the Ministry of Social Affairs.
“You might find that 10 people is very few, but this is because we don’t want to remove the elderly person from their home. If they leave they will get this internal feel-ing that their community and home does not want them.
“The elderly people staying at the centre may be laughing, but inside you feel there’s pain. That is why for those who do have a family, we pro-vide a home-care service.”
About 140 families are registered for the ministry’s home-care serv-ice, which involves sending a team of two nurses, a doctor, and a physi-otherapist to the patient’s home. Only 40 families were registered when the programme launched three years ago.
The Ministry of Health runs a sim-ilar home-care programme in the northern emirates, with 290 elderly patients. The team, which consists of a physician and a staff nurse, vis-its the person’s home for an assess-ment and then makes follow-up vis-its according to requirements. Fam-ilies can register elderly members at one of 13 MoH centres in Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah, Ajman, Fujai-rah and Umm Al Quwain.
None of the staff are licensed geri-atricians, but they are trained in elderly care, said Dr Muna Al Ku-wari, director of the primary health department at the ministry.
“We launched the programme af-ter a study in 2007 found that nearly half of elderly patients admitted to hospitals can be released with home care,” she said.
However, families in need of such services say greater provision for the elderly is needed.
“This team might attend to the eld-
erly person for one or two hours, but these people require round-the-clock care, not just a few hours,” said Atal-lah Habib, who decided to launch his own nursing company after his eld-erly father suffered a stroke.
Criteria that require the elderly to have no direct family before they are admitted to a nursing home only worsens the cultural stigma, Mr Habib said. “It discourages people from giving their parents the care they need. If someone is going to neglect their elderly family mem-ber, they will do so regardless.”
Dr Habib recalled the case of an eld-erly Emirati woman with breast can-cer who was neglected by her family. “The son would leave his mother in a room for 12 hours, without food or water,” he said. “We would knock on his door, and he would refuse our help, which we were offering free.”
Although this may be an excep-tion, changing the negative mis-conceptions about nursing homes could help to reduce the likelihood of such cases, Mr Habib said.
The American Hospital Dubai’s Dr Meenrajan suggested having dedi-cated units attached to a medical facility where families could keep their elderly members for extended periods of time.
“Having an independent unit for these people could work,” he said. But he warned: “It’ll be a few years before you can change the culture, and these people need a mecha-nism to be taken care of right now.”
Experts warn of ageing population tomorrow
How the UAE is preparing for a geriatric boom by expanding home care services, pensioners’ programmes and day centres for the elderly.
