Portal de Cartagena
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The City Council approved the declaration of 'Solidarity City with Alzheimer' in the ordinary plenary session of last 7th September |
This Thursday, September 21, World Alzheimer's Day is celebrated.
On the occasion of this date an event was held in the Reception Hall of the Consistorial Palace in which the Nazarene Mayor of 2017, María Jesús Bustillo, has read a manifesto that has developed the Association of Relatives and Friends of Alzheimer's patients of Cartagena and Region (AFAL) to claim the visibility of this disease and research against this condition.
The event was attended by Councilor for Quality of Life, Francisco Calderón, the Councilor for Social Services, Carmen Martín del Amor, and the AFAL manager, Raúl Nieto Galera.
The manifesto included several claims of the association designed to defend the quality of life of patients and their families, such as: promoting the prevention of dementia from a socio-health perspective;
develop and implement a comprehensive coordination strategy;
to promote scientific and social research in Alzheimer's, as well as the creation of a patient census;
the provision of spaces for family respite and a quality treatment for patients and families;
raise awareness and awareness of society, the private sector and affected families;
integrating caregiver and caregiver into care protocols as a risk population in social issues, both during and after illness;
to consider the expenses derived from the disease and to reduce the deficits increasing the budgets and rewarding the collaborating entities;
advance towards an early treatment to reduce costs and improve the quality of life;
training of volunteers, professionals and health professionals to promote treatment and care, enhancing work spaces with multiprofessional teams, and consider Alzheimer's disease as a priority issue at political and cross-cutting level as a result of the increase.
Within these demands, the manager wanted to highlight the need for a space to treat this disease and to care for the relatives in which AFAL can develop its activity, a request that the Councilor for Quality of Life has acquired as a commitment and explained that since the Consistory is working with the Murcian Health Service to find an adequate space.
"We are in it, and surely with the help of all the municipal groups we will be able to locate a suitable place and enable a budget to face this challenge, which is a challenge for everyone," Calderón said.
For his part, Martín del Amor has congratulated AFAL for its important socio-health work in favor of Alzheimer's patients and has also expressed its commitment to this disease which is a "problem of all."
Afal Cartagena and Comarca is an entity that provides its services since 1995. It has about 220 partners in the Cartagena field who come to their centers to receive care and all kinds of services.
Throughout its more than 21 years of experience, it has served more than 7,000 users.
Among its main objectives are the search for adequate infrastructures that allow them to have a specialized treatment center, financial support to be able to treat patients as necessary and to reach the coordination between the different institutions.
It should be noted that the Plenum of the City Council of Cartagena declared, in a regular session, last September 7th in Cartagena as 'Ciudad Solidaria con Alzheimer', a progressive disease characterized by degeneration of nerve cells in the brain and a decrease in the brain mass.
This disease affects 3.5 million people in Spain among those who suffer from it and their family caregivers.
Through this declaration we want to raise awareness, inform and engage citizens and institutions with a problem that suffer more than 800,000 people throughout Spain, which is the leading cause of dementia in developed countries, as well as one of the main causes of mortality among adults, while serving as an example to other municipalities.
This institutional statement alerted to several issues related to this condition, as there is still no effective treatment or adequate prevention to alleviate the effects of the disease and different studies predict that the prevalence of the disease will be doubled in the next twenty years, mainly due to the greater life expectancy of the population.
The direct and indirect costs generated by Alzheimer's between families exceed 30,000 euros per year and the City Council is also aware that in Cartagena there is a significant incidence of the disease among its neighbors.
For this reason, the City Council of Cartagena showed its concern for this problem "of first magnitude" declaring "City Solidarity with Alzheimer's."
With this, the Consistory supports the initiative led by CEAFA (Spanish Confederation of Associations of Relatives of people with Alzheimer's and other dementias) that claims the implementation of a State Policy of
Alzheimer's disease.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena
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