No City for Old People |Biomedgrid

Our good friend and neighbor, Miguel R. de la Iglesia, works as a doctor in a primary care center in a traditional and outlying neighborhood of the city of A Coruña (Spain). Among his functions is to visit those patients who cannot travel to his office. Perhaps they are bedridden, very ill; or perhaps convalescent. However, the illness of most is none other than old age and loneliness. They are old, alone and living in aging buildings. They lack the strength to go down and up the stairs that separate them from the street. They have no elevator and no means to install and maintain it. Nor do they have the resources to go to a residence, and quite often they don't want to leave ‘their' home either. Without a doubt, the same thing will happen in other areas of our city. The situation of these people is reflected in public statistics. In Spain, one in four households is inhabited by a single person, which means that of all households, 25% are single-person households. And practically half of these households are inhabited by people over 65 years of age, three out of every four of whom are women.