Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Caribbean’s age­ing pop­u­la­tion re­quires the re­gion to move in­to a new era in how it treats its el­der­ly. Here in T&T, Dr La­vanyaku­mari Thon­dava­da es­tab­lished the Geri­atric So­ci­ety of T&T (GSTT) in Oc­to­ber 2023. Thon­dava­da is both the founder and cur­rent pres­i­dent.

Per­haps her name gives it away, but Thon­dava­da was born in Tiru­pati–a city in the In­di­an state of Andhra Pradesh fa­mous for its de­vo­tion.

She moved to T&T in 2006 (a year af­ter her hus­band moved) to prac­tice med­i­cine. It’s a field her fa­ther, grand­fa­ther and her un­cles worked in.

“I nev­er thought to go back. We nev­er missed In­dia. I love Trinidad. It’s so mul­ti­cul­tur­al,” she told WE mag­a­zine last week.

A spe­cial­ist in geron­tol­ogy (the sci­en­tif­ic study of old age, the process of age­ing, and the par­tic­u­lar prob­lems of old peo­ple), Thon­dava­da has al­ways been pas­sion­ate about car­ing for the el­der­ly. That would in­spire her work with the GSTT.

“We on­ly have one geron­tol­ogy de­part­ment in the St James Med­ical Com­plex for the past 35 years. There is no ex­pan­sion of that clin­ic in T&T. Even in pri­ma­ry care, we need to start up some geri­atric clin­ics at a pri­ma­ry care lev­el; sim­i­lar to how we have a child as­sess­ment clin­ic or how we are treat­ing pae­di­atrics, we have to treat our el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion as well as spe­cial care,” she said.

If this is done at both a pri­ma­ry care lev­el as well as a ter­tiary care lev­el, she said, it will de­crease the hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sion rate and dra­mat­i­cal­ly de­crease the fi­nan­cial bur­den on the coun­try.

Thon­dava­da added, “Every­body thinks they are a bur­den on so­ci­ety. No, they are not. If you do spe­cial care for them, a lot of things will cut down fi­nan­cial­ly.”

Through her work at GSTT, her team vis­it­ed nine el­der­ly homes in 2023, dis­trib­ut­ing ham­pers. They did a plant dis­tri­b­u­tion for last year’s Cor­pus Christi, host­ed a Sip and Paint event, and held free wa­ter aer­o­bics ses­sions with a trained coach. As re­cent­ly as Moth­er’s Day, Thon­dava­da and her team gave out flow­ers.

To fur­ther in­cor­po­rate the el­der­ly in­to every as­pect of life, the GSTT cre­at­ed a car­ni­val band in 2024, en­cour­ag­ing old­er adults to play mas. They or­gan­ised free maxi taxis to take the el­der­ly from dif­fer­ent parts of the coun­try to the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah to rev­el. The feed­back from their events over the last two years has been phe­nom­e­nal.

Thon­dava­da said, “We are get­ting a lot of pos­i­tive feed­back every day. We are get­ting in­ter­na­tion­al phone calls as well about the homes, which is the best home for their par­ents, be­cause they live alone. In some in­stances, they need some kind of as­sis­tance. In oth­er cas­es, they are ask­ing when our next ac­tiv­i­ty ses­sion is. They have be­come very in­ter­est­ed, and they want more.”

Thon­dava­da’s team, which in­cludes gen­er­al prac­ti­tion­er Dr Jacque­line Sab­ga and Ro­man Catholic Vic­ar Gen­er­al Fa­ther Mar­tin Sir­ju, has found her to be a ded­i­cat­ed ser­vant to el­der­ly peo­ple every­where.

Sab­ga told WE mag­a­zine, “She is the most ded­i­cat­ed and dri­ven hu­man who shows com­pas­sion and a pas­sion for the aged. She has pi­o­neered this or­gan­i­sa­tion and all of our out­reach projects that are so im­pact­ful!”

Now, Thon­dava­da is tak­ing aim at mak­ing the rights and priv­i­leges of the el­der­ly legal­ly bind­ing.

She cit­ed the Madrid In­ter­na­tion­al Plan of Ac­tion on Age­ing, say­ing T&T has not up­grad­ed its pol­i­cy for over a decade. Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, the Cay­man Is­lands, Grena­da and Guyana, how­ev­er, have up­grad­ed their poli­cies in the last eight years.

“It’s not easy, but adap­ta­tion of re­gion­al poli­cies and laws on age­ing and old­er per­sons is very im­por­tant at least every five years. We have to work to­geth­er on the age­ing labour force and pro­mot­ing healthy age­ing,” she added.

She said it was more than just work­ing on pal­lia­tive care, but al­so mak­ing el­der­ly peo­ple more so­cia­ble in their lat­er years of life. “We al­so have to look at life­long and dig­i­tal in­clu­sion. These days, it’s tech­nol­o­gy. They have to adapt, and we have to train them. Dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy is very im­por­tant,” she ex­plained.

An­oth­er key part of Thon­dava­da’s mis­sion is to pro­tect the el­der­ly from phys­i­cal and fi­nan­cial abuse. She said it sad­dens her when she reads in the news­pa­per of el­der­ly peo­ple be­ing as­sault­ed or killed in home in­va­sions, or when the el­der­ly in so­ci­ety are robbed of their fi­nan­cial earn­ings.

“The Gov­ern­ment has to do a lot of aware­ness cam­paigns on how to pro­tect your­self. Now is the rainy sea­son; we have to teach them risk man­age­ment and what the im­me­di­ate hot­lines are be­cause most of them can’t get out if it is flood­ing and they are liv­ing alone,” she ex­plained.

She said the GSTT has many plans, but they have to come to­geth­er with those in au­thor­i­ty to raise the aware­ness lev­el.

For Dr La­vanyaku­mari Thon­dava­da, this isn’t mere­ly a pas­sion project; it’s about pro­tect­ing and bet­ter­ing the lives of an al­most for­got­ten group.