A medical practitioner, Dr Oladipupo Fakoya, has called on the government at all levels to fashion out ways of addressing the peculiar health needs of the elderly population.
Fakoya, who is the physician in charge of the Ijesaland Geriatric Centre, Ilesha, an arm of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife, said it had become imperative for the government to act in that regard since old age usually comes with multiple chronic conditions, detrimental to the quality of life of the elderly, when not attended to.
He spoke at a free medical outreach for the elderly people in rural communities organised by the Centre in collaboration with the OAUTH and held at Imesi-Ile, Osun State, in commemoration of the International Day of Older Persons, where over 200 aged residents benefitted from free health screening, consultation and drugs.
A statement from Fakoya obtained in Osogbo on Wednesday further read in parts, “with the growing population of people older than sixty in the nation, it becomes imperative for government at all levels to begin to look at ways of addressing the needs of the elderly population, particularly their health challenges, as many of them suffer from multiple chronic conditions which are detrimental to their quality of life when not attended to.”
Speaking in a similar vein, Dr. Busola Oluwajuyitan, a co-founder of Sire Health Care Services, said senior citizens in the country would live longer if proper healthcare services could be made available for them by the government.
Oluwajuyitan, whose group, specialises in providing health care services for the elderly, urged the government to come up with relevant health policies and programmes that would meet the peculiar health needs of the elderly.
