Kali­fa Clyne

An el­der­ly man is reg­is­tered at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex's emer­gency de­part­ment for treat­ment of a stroke.

He re­ceives treat­ment and must stay overnight.

Af­ter doc­tors de­cide it is okay to dis­charge the pa­tient, hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials call the num­bers pro­vid­ed to con­tact a rel­a­tive. No one an­swers.

When of­fi­cials vis­it the ad­dress pro­vid­ed, no one has heard of the man and no one knows the fam­i­ly.

These are the true sto­ries tak­ing place at this na­tions' hos­pi­tals as dozens of el­der­ly pa­tients are aban­doned by rel­a­tives on a month­ly ba­sis, left in the care of al­ready over­bur­dened hos­pi­tals, in the al­ready over­bur­dened pub­lic health care sec­tor.

The aban­don­ment of the el­der­ly at the na­tion's hos­pi­tals is just one of many is­sues fac­ing the over-65 gen­er­a­tion in T&T.

"They come in. Some­one will drop them off and af­ter they are dis­charged they just stay. Weeks pass and no one comes for them. No fam­i­ly mem­bers vis­it and if they have con­tact num­bers, the num­bers don't work," said Lau­ra Nero, man­ag­er, Li­ai­son Unit of the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

"Some­times the pa­tient will be able to say where they live but oth­er time they can­not and with fake ad­dress­es and phone num­bers it is some­times im­pos­si­ble to find their fam­i­lies."

The South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) spends an av­er­age of $2,790,063.65 a year to ac­com­mo­date so­cial cas­es, most of which are el­der­ly peo­ple.

In a re­cent count the hos­pi­tal said it was cur­rent­ly hous­ing 15 such cas­es, six of whom were over 55.

The NCRHA is cur­rent­ly hous­ing 17 adult so­cial cas­es and nine pae­di­atric cas­es at vary­ing costs.

Hos­pi­tals work with the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment to place these cas­es in a home.

The num­ber of T&T's pop­u­la­tion over the age of 60 years old is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 174,200 or 13.4 per cent.

The per­cent­age over 80 years old is 1.7 per cent.

Nero said the psy­cho­log­i­cal im­pact of telling an el­der­ly pa­tient their rel­a­tives could not be found var­ied.

"Some of them know their rel­a­tives are not com­ing back, but we try to en­sure when we move them to a home it is with­in the lo­ca­tion where they came from," she said.

Nero said the fre­quen­cy with which el­der­ly pa­tients end­ed up as so­cial cas­es at the NCRHA was high.

"I'd say month­ly or every two weeks we get about a dozen. Some­times we can re­unite them with their rel­a­tives. Oth­er times they go to a home."

The NCRHA has a num­ber of aban­doned adults as well as pae­di­atric pa­tients and de­spite the in­ter­ven­tion of the So­cial Work De­part­ment, as well as the Li­ai­son Unit, these pa­tients re­main for lengthy pe­ri­ods with­in the in­sti­tu­tion un­til they are placed in the req­ui­site homes.