The data for neglect and abuse of the elderly by their relatives during the months of quarantine are shocking. In recent years, cases of neglect and abandonment are increasing.
From all Silver Alert life line calls 2019, 32% concerned complaints of neglect and abandonment of persons of 3rd age, 21% for financial exploitation of the elderly by members of their own family , corresponding rate for psychological and physical violence , while 1% of the calls concerned the sexual abuse of an elderly person by a relative.
The stories of elderly parents who were abandoned by their own children in hospitals in the country are also shocking. .
“She was old 3 children, they never visited her, they did not take her from the hospital. And while the social service did its best to find a care unit to accommodate her, the 3 Her children never acted to get the elderly woman into a care unit. After all, I have to tell you that the elderly woman ended up living in the hospital”, points out Kalomira Bazelli, life line sociologist ALERT
Indicatively , in every general vigil of the Asclepieion Hospital in Voula 2 with 3 3 year olds will be abandoned by their family in an emergency and will disappear from their lives.
“On average, every hospital attendee attends 2-3 elderly and then abandoned. They are abandoned by their relatives and then refuse to come and pick them up because they do not have the finances or because their parents are suffering from an incurable disease.. It is a phenomenon that due to the health crisis has increased dangerously”, notes Emilios Voulgarakis , depl. Commander General of the Asclepieion of Voula
Now the issue is so common that the country's hospitals are struggling to develop a network of protection, so that the abandoned elderly can find shelter in accommodation units
“The last incident was a lady who came to the Athens nursing home which if we did not accept her , he had nowhere to go, the hospital could not treat her and the woman would be left on the streets… This is very sad, because parents are the greatest value to man”, emphasizes Zois Kolios, πρ. temporary administration of the Athens Nursing Home.
