'Raise awareness to ensure health rights of the elderly'

25 May 2010, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

Awareness should be raised among the people to ensure health and legal rights of elderly citizens of the country, experts said at a meeting yesterday. Experts of the Centre for the Rehabilitation of the Paralysed (CRP) and the Elder Support Programme (ESP) also reached a consensus on setting up a geriatric unit, a special unit for the healthcare of elderly people, at the Mirpur branch of CRP. They also said a final decision on opening geriatric unit will be taken after further discussions. Naeema C Quayes, convenor of ESP, said there are a large number of elderly people in the country who are being neglected and a large number of senior citizens are suffering from various disabilities and mental illness. So, they need extra care. “The ESP and CRP want to team up to build a platform from where all of us who are working to ensure the rights of elderly people can work in a coordinated way,” she said. According to unofficial statistics, there are about five crore elderly people in Bangladesh, Naeema said, adding that but there is no reliable data about the number of elderly people with disabilities. Bangladesh bureau of statistics should collect and publish reliable data on elderly people and senior citizens with disabilities, she added. The meeting was held at the state guesthouse Meghna in the city. Head of Occupational Therapy department of CRP Md Mahfuzur Rahman, among others, was present at the meeting.