Dementia is Scotland’s biggest health issue. There is currently no effective treatment and no cure.
Patients in the final years of their lives are also facing “an injustice and an inequality” because they are forced to foot the bill for specialist nursing care unlike those suffering from other terminal illnesses such as cancer, says Henry Simmons, head of Alzheimer Scotland.
The charity says current policy is failing patients at the end stages of the disease because the needs of patients are assessed as social care rather than healthcare.
Families face difficult choices to fund specialist nursing that should be a basic right.
Today, we issue a rallying call to the Scottish Government to end this unfair disparity in care costs.
We are backing Alzheimer Scotland’s Fair Dementia Care campaign, which calls for a manifesto commitment from all parties ahead of the 2021 election that patients with advanced dementia will no longer be forced to foot the bill for end-of-life medical care.
We want this to be one of the first acts of Parliament after the 2021 Holyrood election and we are also looking for a commitment that all families will receive a year of post-diagnostic support.
Alzheimer Scotland estimates just 50 per cent receive this due to a shortage of dedicated link workers.
“These are people who have paid into our system their whole lives, who have built our societies,” says Mr Simmons.
“For us to say, we can’t afford that, it’s unjustifiable.”
To support the campaign go http://www.alzscot.org/fairdementiacare
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