May You Live to a Ripe Old Age

A lot of people thought that elderly issues means anything related to the problems of old folk home. Likewise, the elderly issues are often stigmatized as unhygienic environment, inadequate medical care and inconvenient infrastructure of the old folk home. “Donate more money to the old folk home and everything will be solved,” it is not unusual to uncover similar mindset from the society.

“Problem which can be solved with money is not a problem.”

In fact, elderly issues is closely associated with the problems of aging population of the society, decreasing body functionality due to senescence and the challenges faced by the family members when taking care of the elderly patients. Elderly issues not only concern with the elderly themselves but it is related to the family members, care-givers and anyone who live underneath the same roof with the elderly. “Elderly issues today are our own problems tomorrow,” as you and I will soon become the victim of aging.

Improving living quality and medical care of the elderly rely on us, the society to pull our socks up.

The availability of geriatrics specialists is rarely seen in the hospitals of Malaysia; unfortunately, multiple disorders tend to manifest on the elderly once they start to develop a single illness. What will happen next is the elderly have to move from a hospital to another hospital, visiting different specialists. Solely the routine follow up requires an elderly patient with heart disease and diabetes to pay a call to cardiologist, endocrinologist, ophthalmologist and others; just say that if the elderly have more medical conditions such as prostate problem, stroke and cancer, they would need to look up for more physicians.

And merely visiting a single physician, one would need to wait for registration, consultation, dispensary and it consume at least half a day of the elderly. The more the illness in the elderly, the more the elderly need to suffer in the process of receiving medical care; not to mention the cost of the medication. What is more terrorize is that different physician prescribe different medications, imagine an elderly patient visiting three specialists, he would have to take a bundle of medications at once.  How would the fragile body of the elderly sustain the overwhelming force of multiple drugs?

Since a lot of disorders are due to biological aging, how nice it will be if the is one stop medical care station for elderly and allowing the them to receive medical care at once without wasting their time and money. During the day whereby the health care system in Malaysia is improved and being considerate to the elderly, ‘May you live to a ripe old age” will be certainly a blessing.

By sound of silence

P.S.: The opinions expressed by the writer do not represent the view of TuPSS Editorial Board.