MOH may increase the retirement age Health Ministry Undersecretary Dr Khaled Al-Sahlawi said that the ministry had requested the Civil Services Commission (CSC) to raise the retirement age of both Kuwaiti and expatriate doctors as well as those working in other health-related jobs to 75 from 65. He added the ministry needs to know when the decision would be implemented and about the definition of medicine-related jobs. In another issue, Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs and Minister of Health, Sheikh Mohammed Al- Abdullah discussed an aging problem in the health facilities which is patients who had been hospitalized for as long as 17 years , in some cases; one who almost reside in hospitals because their families refuse to take them home. According to statistics, there are between 50 and 100 of these patients in various hospitals and that the majority of them were elderly people, people with special needs and children who have been officially discharged yet they are still left in hospitals. In this regard, informed sources stressed that the majority of still-hospitalized discharged patients were senior citizens who suffer no ailments but their families refuse to take them home with the excuse of having nobody to look after them. “It is as if hospitals have turned into geriatric houses”, said the sources noting that the families of those old people must be ashamed of sending their seniors to geriatric houses and thus leave them in hospital. According to hospitals social workers’ reports, some families leave senior family members in hospitals for many reasons such as taking over their houses or collecting their salaries or pensions by getting their special powers of attorney. “Besides the bad psychological and social effects such cases have on in patients themselves, their long stay further prolongs the waiting time of other patients to find an empty bed or private room in public hospitals”, said the reports. Commenting on the issue, Adan hospital’s head of the social services office, Falah Al-Ajmi stressed that Adan hospital has 50 resident patients and that some of them had been in hospital for 17 years. He also noted that the majority were citizens because in case of expatriates, the hospital’s Patients Aid Fund pays for two flight tickets for the patient and a nurse to take the patient back to the nearest hospital at his home country. “One of the patients has been abandoned in the hospital since he was born 13 years ago’, he said noting that the child was born with a disability and that his family refuses to take him home though they are being paid special allowances for him.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 10:54:23 +0000
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