Talk is cheap when it comes to fuel poverty

Imagine being forced to live in a single room as spiralling fuel costs make heating your home impossible. For many pensioners, such a frightening thought is a sad reality as they are left with no choice but to make drastic cutbacks just to stay alive over the winter.

In fact, a new report by the British Gas Help The Aged Partnership estimates that 4.5million elderly people will heat a single room – and 25 percent would climb into bed as a way of keeping warm.

But what is alarming is that we hear the same year after year and nothing has been done apart from a few token payments to alleviate the pressure of fuel poverty on the elderly. Winter fuel payments are set to increase – a much needed start for sure – and a sign that the government is at least looking at the problem.

But what are organisations like British Gas and E.ON doing to help their elderly customers?

Not a lot in the case of one lady I spoke to.

Widow Noreen Binz lives in South Shields and is on a tariff run by E.ON Age Concern, which she hoped would have her best interests at heart. Instead she’s faced gas and electric bills over the summer totalling more than £300. Confusing bills have compounded the problem – and forced her to consider cancelling her direct debit to the company until she knew how much she had to pay.

“I’m frightened of the costs,” she says. And who can blame her? Her suppliers have certainly done very little to help – and instead of cutting costs continue to pressure the government to increase winter fuel payments.

Reports like this raise awareness of the plight of many pensioners but lack credibility coming from an industry content to bleat about the Governments inactivity but doing little itself.
But at least the report has one use; On top of an open fire, as much needed winter fuel…

Alzheimer’s Run

Should people with dementia be put down? Well that’s what Lady Warnock, the ‘veteran’ medical ethics commentator, believes.

She is quoted in a recent article in the Daily Telegraph as saying that people with dementia are a burden. “If you’re demented, you’re wasting people’s lives – your family’s lives – you’re wasting the resources of the National Health Service,” she said.

She went on to say that she hoped people would soon be “licensed to put others down”.
This is eerily redolent of Logan’s Run – the 1976 film where anyone over the age of 30 is killed – and raises potentially disturbing questions.

If Lady Warnock’s idea is given credence – and I can see some people thinking it’s a good idea – then where do you stop?

Why not euthanise other people with terminal degenerative conditions, such as motor neuron disease or Parkinson’s? After all, they will become a burden to their family and the NHS too.
Heck, anyone needing care could be got rid of; it would solve the funding problem in the NHS and allow everyone to get on and enjoy their own lives without having to care for loved ones.

Perhaps as soon as someone is diagnosed with a condition, or even comes to retirement – the end of their ‘useful’ life and when people most need the NHS and care services – they could be terminated painlessly thereby solving any problems before they start.

Of course my dystopian vision of the future won’t happen, but neither should Lady Warnock’s ideas ever get beyond opinions in newspaper articles either.

A person has a right to life and just because they’re ill doesn’t mean they have no value and should be dispensed with. After all, there are about 6 million carers in this country, and hundreds of thousands employed in the industry. Many of them enjoy looking after others and make a positive difference to their quality of life.

A person with dementia is someone who has lived and loved; treating them like diseased cattle is not an option. We need to understand the condition and treat it – and one day even cure it.

Animal magic

At Bettercaring we take great delight in all things offbeat and decidedly oddball. So we jumped at the opportunity when a note arrived inviting us to an exotic ‘jungle safari’ at a nearby care home.

By the time we got there, all manner of creepy and cuddly critters were being paraded in front of excited care home residents. These included a fruit bat, an albino Burmese python, a rhesus monkey, ring-tailed lemur and penguin.

As the exotic creatures were passed around by specialist handlers, the home’s residents gasped in wonder and not a little awe; proving that even the frailest and most dependent people can raise the roof when they’re having a good time.

Of course, there was a serious side to the afternoon – it gave residents much needed stimulation – but it also pushed back the boundaries and challenged preconceptions of old people in care.

One lady loved snakes and had grown accustomed to them after spending time in Africa – yet never expected to see a live one again. Filled with questions about the python – and eager to give it a stroke, she showed no fear. And although others were less keen on the snake (one resident, for example, shrieked at the mere mention of the word ‘snake’), all were willing to overcome their trepidations and give it a pet.

It was a similar story for the other animals. Indeed, the penguin and rhesus monkey proved so popular the event over-ran by an hour-and-a-half.

But what really struck me was the attentiveness of the residents – especially towards the animals. I expected the day to be a trying test of patience, with the residents bored and disinterested. In fact, they couldn’t wait to see what was next.

Even after the animals had gone, the home was still buzzing with excitement. The activities co-ordinator was pleased; the day had been a roaring success and she was looking into hosting another animal safari day…despite the penguin’s insistence on messing everywhere and the monkey escaping into the manager’s office.

In fact, the only grumpy face in the building belonged to Buster the Shih Tzu pat dog – who must’ve been feeling like an endangered species himself.

Car park rage

Good news for people in Scotland and Wales that have loved ones in hospital; no more will you have to pay for the privilege of parking at the hospital to visit them.

But for those that reside in England, the charges – often equivalent to multi-storey car parks – remain in place.

It doesn’t seem fair – wasn’t the NHS set up to be free for all? Even if you purchase a weekly or season ticket, it is still not cheap to park.

I’ve written before on the practice of charging for car parking – basically, I think it’s immoral – but this rubs it in.

While the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly should be applauded for getting rid of these charges, the UK government should be condemned for not following suit.

The government is not going to follow either. Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said he did not believe it was a “sensible use of limited resources” to subsidise car parking at hospitals in England.

However, I’m pretty sure that the Welsh and Scottish branches of the NHS aren’t swimming in excess cash, but they still seem to have found the money to do it, so I don’t buy that excuse.

I also don’t believe another comment from Bradshaw. He added that hospital trusts set their own charges to cover the cost of running and maintaining a car park. If so, how it can cost that much - £3.30 for 2 hours at one hospital in Birmingham - to look after a bit of tarmac with some white lines painted on it is beyond me. Even with a few CCTV cameras and a security guard or two, the cost is not that high – certainly not high enough to justify the charges.

It feels like yet another way that taxpayers are being fleeced through no fault of their own.

Nobody should have to pay to visit their loved ones. My advice is to find the nearest side street to the hospital, park there and walk in.

Alzheimer’s breakthrough gives real hope

When I first heard about a potential breakthrough in finding a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease last night, I was sceptical.

I’ve banged on about this in previous blogs, but in recent weeks it seems every day has brought new stories of potential treatments for Alzheimer’s or ways to stop it developing in the first place. From properties in blood pressure or cholesterol control drugs (promising), through tomatoes and tea (doubtful) to a helmet that bathes the user in infra-red light (downright odd) it seems anything and everything could be the key.

So many theories left me jaded and cynical; it seemed no-one really had any concrete clues as to what could treat the condition.

But this changed last night.

British scientists say a drug called rember can stop Alzheimer’s progressing by as much as 81%. There are hopes it could even stop the condition in its early stages, before symptoms appear.

Crucially, rember targets the ‘tangles’ in the brain of someone with Alzheimer's that destroy nerve cells and lead to a deterioration in memory and can bring the worst affected parts back to functional life. While not reversing the condition, it does seem to virtually halt its progress

By addressing the tangles, seemingly with success – although the trial was only on 321 people – it goes to the crux of the condition and genuinely seems to offer an effective treatment that could extend the functional life of people with Alzheimer's by years.

While my optimism is tempered by the facts that it could still be several years before the drug is ready to bring to market, and even then there is no guarantee it will be available on the NHS – remember NICE’s decision on Aricept [see Dementia: restricted access to drugs ] - it is nonetheless the most concrete evidence yet that finally the trauma of dementia could be on the way to being beaten.

Are you running the risk of dementia?

If newspaper reports from the past 7 days are to be believed, women who had low IQ as children, now have high cholesterol and blood pressure and regularly eat tofu are destined to be struck down with dementia.

Meanwhile, men over the age of 90 who eat plenty of tomatoes and fish are in great shape to avoid the condition.

Some of it we know already, such as the memory benefits provided by fish; others are new. But the constant reportage makes for information overload. Throw in recent genetic breakthroughs and you’d think we’re on the cusp of a genuine breakthrough in treating the disease.

The problem is, we’re constantly on the cusp – and waiting for a cure for Alzheimer’s is like waiting for a bus that’ll never arrive. Although I’d like to be proved wrong.

More potential causes will come and go over the next few weeks. We’ll continue to be told what is good and bad for us to eat – potentially scary if you’ve spent a lifetime eating the ‘wrong’ food – and never even known.

Take the latest culprit, tofu. A supposed ‘superfood’ - many healthy and committed vegetarians swear by it – yet now their being told it could cause dementia.

This theory may be debunked over time, while the search for other causes continues relentlessly.

There’s no doubt such findings are needed - but shouldn’t the boffins keep the results to themselves until they find a cure? Or at least make a genuine breakthrough?
By Robert Mair

Hope of deliverance

Yesterday was a good day for people like pensioner Margaret Coates.

She made headlines in March because she faced blindness after her local PCT refused to fund the drug treatment needed to combat her wet age-related macular degeneration.

Bromley PCT said it would only fund treatment for those with unusual or unique clinical factors, and Mrs Coates had neither.

But the kind of issues affecting the pensioner could be a thing of the past in England if the recommendations in Lord Ara Darzi’s review of the NHS are put into practice.

One of the key tenets of Lord Darzi’s review is to ‘personalise’ – that word again – services to make them fit for everyone’s needs, “includ[ing] those people traditionally less likely to seek help or who find themselves discriminated against in some way”.

In addition, Lord Darzi says the NHS should “guarantee patients access to the most clinically and cost effective drugs and treatments” where the clinician recommends them.

Reading between the lines, this should mean that older people such as Mrs Coates will be able to get the treatment they need.

There was more good news in Lord Darzi’s report. The commitment to preventative healthcare should help pensioners and people with learning disabilities to remain in their own homes for longer.

A focus on quality rather than targets is also welcome. Putting the emphasis on providing quality, individual care and improving standards harks back to the earlier days of the NHS and is long overdue.

But while Lord Darzi’s report on the future of the NHS makes for heartening reading, it is up to the government to deliver on it and as ever this is the potential sticking point; neither he nor the government has made any mention – that I can find – of how this will be paid for.

This is worrying. The NHS is underfunded and implementing the recommendations of the report will not be cheap.

Where the extra money will come from to make good on these commitments is a mystery to me and without a coherent strategy for funding it I can see Lord Darzi’s report falling flat. That would be a great opportunity missed and people like Mrs Coates will still not receive the treatment they need.