Health Concern holds Conference on elderly care

Health Concern Ghana, a non-governmental health care delivery organization has has held a conference on elderly care in Accra.

A recent UN statistics on the state and welfare of the aged in West Africa paints a very alarming picture of the elderly, and that requires urgent attention from all sectors to put in the right mechanism to control the situation.

It is against this backdrop that Health Concern Ghana in partnership with the Danish Welfare College organized the 2nd International Conference on Elderly Care under the theme; Building Capacity for Elderly Care in Ghana.

The conference brought together all the top brass in the health sector, academia, government and the media to share ideas on the way forward to developing a onetime national plan to promoting and caring for the elderly.

Mrs. Mary Aboagye, Executive Director of Health Concern Ghana maintained that capacity building is important to safeguarding the health of the elderly. She indicated that the health status of the elderly poses challenges to both the elderly population and the health systems of the country.

She says her organization have started providing professional care to the elderly in their homes. This service, she noted, is beneficial to relatives who have neither the skills nor the resources to provide quality care for the elderly.

Dr. Samuel Ayete-Nyampong, an expert in pastoral care for the elderly, said Ghana was at a very critical stage in elderly care and wondered why the country is yet to have a specialist hospital to provide health care for the elderly.