Caring for the Elderly with Dementia in Africa

Abstract

Most of Africa’s population is young. However, the fastest growing portion of Africa’s population is that of those aged 60 years and above. Africa’s older people suffer two common neuropsychiatric disorders namely Dementia and Depression in addition to numerous physical ailments. In the past, Africa’s elderly were treated with much reverence and respect; and Africa’s extended family system ensured their welfare whereby strong family bonds held together generations of the old, the matured, the youths and the children for the benefit of all. Today Africa is undergoing rapid demographic and socio-economic changes due to money economies, globalization, the migration of the young in search of jobs (brain drain, rural to urban migration etc.), and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Growing old, in Africa today, translates into poverty, penury and anguish. There is no official social security system and pension schemes for the few are erratic. This, therefore, leaves the burden of care of the elderly, especially those with dementia, to the family/relatives with the actual caretakers being mostly women, often daughters or younger wives. These are the ones who carry the burden of care for the majority of the old and demented in Africa, a situation which has become increasingly unsustainable. The practice of putting the elderly away in nursing homes or homes for the aged is alien and repugnant to most African cultures and ways of life. There is thus a need to revisit the traditional African family support system and modify it to suite the modern changed lifestyles and realities of today’s Africans and yet be in tune with the age-old African family system of caring for their old. The practical solution, for every African family with ageing frail parents, or grandparents, is to have a “granny apartment” and continue to care for their elderly including those with dementia and other infirmities. This way the African elderly will continue to live with their families in dignity till death and avoid the misery that, otherwise, awaits them in old age.