Tag Archives: alzheimers
Health secretary Jeremy Hunt visits Norwich dementia unit
The reality of living with and caring for someone with dementia is extremely tough, and Thorpe St Andrew pensioner Maurice Bartle was among carers who told health secretary Jeremy Hunt more about the difficulties they face when he visited Norwich yesterday.
Kim Briscoe, Health correspondent Saturday, October 20, 2012
6:30 AM
Jeremy Hunt talking to dementia carer
The 72-year-old lives in South Hill Road with his wife Shirley, also 72, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two years ago.
Mr Bartle, a retired maintenance electrician, said: “At the moment we are going through a difficult patch. The wife has got a bit of a rejection of drugs and of me sometimes.”
The pair visit Hammerton Court’s day centre one day a week and Mr Bartle said he valued being able to meet other carers.
The £13m unit, in Bowthorpe Road, has 36 bedrooms and also houses the Norfolk Dementia Care Academy – which aims to be a centre of excellence in training staff and carers to look after people with the illness.
He said: “I have found it ideal, but it’s not for long enough and I wish we could come for longer.
“I have found it very informative and it’s given me a lot of extra information I wasn’t aware of until I came here.”
Singing brings harmony to sufferers of dementia
Dementia is not something anyone would like to associate with their own future.
Rutland Reminders’ volunteers get together for a singing session. They are from left, Clare Hitchcox, Pam Houlden, Janet Berridge, Dr Charles Lawrence, Diana Ellard, Ann Thomas, Mike Gee, Ruth Thomas-Twinn and Gill Lawrence.
Dementia is not something anyone would like to associate with their own future.
Unless you have had direct experience of it, usually by way of an elderly relative, it’s a thing, like death, that most of us don’t like to think about.
And yet the World Heath Organisation describes dementia as the next global health time bomb: one in four people over 65 will develop it.
A huge worldwide increase in numbers is largely down to increased longevity. The Alzheimer’s Society estimates there are 800,000 sufferers in the UK, only a minority of whom have been diagnosed and who are mostly looked after by an estimated 600,000 unpaid carers.
Rutland Reminders is a group that was set up by a teacher in 2010 to help local sufferers.
