And switching gears now… elder abuse - we've all heard of it, but what exactly is being done? Well, very little so far, mainly due to the lack of reporting and stiff penalties. But today the National Council of Aging organized a conference with various organizations who all do their part to protect the elderly. This conference was to highlight the types of abuse the elderly face and ways to detect and prevent, as well as to begin a framework for collecting more data.
The Minister of State in the Ministry of Human Development explained that the goal is the legislation surrounding elderly abuse.
Elvia Vega Samos, Minister of State, Ministry of Human Development
"The Ministry is very serious about this, we're serious about ending elder abuse, and so we have care providers from all over the country here with us today, we have representatives from PAHO, the National Council of Aging and we realize it's not something that can be done in isolation, we need all the stakeholders to come together and make a difference for our elderly."
"All the service providers are here, we're looking at the risk factors, and this afternoon, we're going to be strategizing as to see how to get rid of these risk factors, if we cannot get rid of them all together, at least minimize these risk factors. We know that ageism is a big factor and this is where the elderly are looked at as, they don't serve any purpose anymore in our society and that is not so. They have so much to contribute and that is why we have the service care providers with us, what are the risk factors and how we can minimize this?"
"We are serious about revisiting our legislation and looking to have consequences for persons that are doing this because we need to protect our elderly so the legislation will be revisited and we will try to do our best to protect our elderly."
