The figures are certainly alarming. Within 20 years the number of people affected by the Alzheimer disease in Spain will increase from 900,000 to 1.5 million, and exceeds 60 million in the planet. On this the World Day of Alzheimer awareness, the medical advances, still insufficient, in the precocious diagnose and prolongation of the expectation of life. Medical science help us to live longer, but no guarantee against Alzheimer. We are facing the fast advancing magnitude of an epidemic, that devastates not only the minds of the so affected, but the heart and soul of their families.
"We have a system of social protection that we can not permit" is the new motto, under which, in the era of global economic spasm and cut-backs on social and health service especially everywhere; some seem interested in dismembering - who knows, so as to privatize later(?) - the State of wellbeing which all of us have constructed. The trend now is to taunt and sneer at that socialist government, together with the left wing Parliament, recognised as universal right the attention to people with dependency, like those debilitated in mind and body by Alzheimer, hugely forgotten or ignored by all public administrations.
It's true that the estimation of the law of dependency was badly calculated in times of bonanza, but not for that any government, left or right, should be legitimated to back and help such a tragedy that affects hundreds of thousands of families. Mentally we keep our fingers crossed that the misfortune wouldn't happen to our loved ones (let others have it!), but palliate the effects suffered by the sick is the responsibility of all of us.
Instead of cutting expenses here, there and everywhere, it's time we decide what kind of State of wellbeing we want and how willing we are to finance it. Ignoring the issue doesn't make it go away. It will continue it's course. It's senseless to forget the future.
Tags: responsibility, alzheimer
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