The coronavirus pandemic is fatally affecting older people and those of all ages who are compromised by major health conditions.
This happens not only in epidemics but in all natural disasters, war situations, famine etc. where the older generation is decimated and sometimes disappears. In these circumstances, priority is naturally given to children and pregnant women, while older people are often an "invisible group", as the World NGO Forum on Ageing put it in 2002. This is not the case, as the daily news is dramatic and everyone is aware of the consequences of the disaster of the elderly.
But there is a suspicion, backed up by data from the recent report of the Instituto de Salud Carlos III, that the shocking figures of deaths routinely offered to us every day are lower than the real ones. This is confirmed by many health professionals. Officially, coronavirus deaths are considered to occur when tests are positive. But many patients who die at home or in nursing homes are not tested.
This catastrophe is reminiscent of the tremendous heat wave of 2003. In France, 15,000 people died, most of them elderly people. In Spain only 141 were reported, because naturally we were more accustomed to high temperatures. When the INE compared the actual data with those recorded in previous years, it was discovered that in the month of the event there had been a deviation of more than 6,000 deaths among the elderly. The heat wave did affect the Spanish elderly. As in the current case, the deficient information came from the autonomous communities.
Once again we see the strategic failure of the organisation of the Spanish health system, which has left an essential central structure at a minimum, as we have now seen. There is no exact and rapid information on what is happening, there is no transparency, there are no basic technicians, as the ministry always had, or they have lost their functions, nor scientific committees to advise, and if they do advise, they are ignored; the capacity to manage, as we have seen in the supply of medical material and equipment, is disastrous. We believe that the situation is so disturbing that our politicians will have to react when the crisis is over. It is not a question of going against the State of the Autonomous Regions, but of completing what it lacks, complying with laws such as the 2003 Law on the Quality and Cohesion of the Health System or creating new ones, but strengthening the apex of the system so as not to be shipwrecked in crises.
The vulnerability of elderly people is pathetic in the case of residential care homes for the elderly. The death rate is difficult to assimilate, with contradictory figures that need to be confirmed. We have always been in favour of "medicalising" old people's homes and making them more than just a substitute for the home. We foresaw something negative, not so disastrous, because they meant concentrated risk groups, but we were disconcerted by the lack of preventive action as soon as the seriousness of the pandemic became known. I think that the dependency system will also have to be reviewed and its funding increased when we recover from this epidemic.
Eduardo Rodríguez Rovira
Honorary President of CEOMA (Spanish Confederation of Organisations for the Elderly)