Life & Health

Home Health Care Program Created Due to Longevity of Elderly in Hojancha

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Hojancha residents are considered some of the longest living people in the world because they live to be more than 90 years old in healthy condition both mentally and physically. However, this does not mean they can get around easily. That is why the Hojancha Area of Health created a specialized assistance program that allows the elderly to be visited at home.

The service began in early May and benefits about 30 elderly who avoid having to travel to the Anexion Hospital in Nicoya. These senior citizens are from communities far away from the city center, such as Monte Romo, Santa Marta, El Socorro and Cuesta Roja, among others.

Randall Alvarado, director of the Hojancha Social Security Clinic, confirmed that the canton has inhabitants that live long.

“We have a population of senior citizens with high longevity for whom it is difficult to travel to the Anexion Hospital because they are bedridden, with psychiatric symptoms and clinical disorders. Stemming from this, we developed the idea that the geriatric specialist from the Anexion Hospital and the family medicine doctor at the clinic could visit them at home to give them the required attention,” Alvarado said.

Alvarado thinks this initiative is a big help because many of the medications that the elderly need are not even available in the clinic, whereas with the program, patients are provided with the medicines that they need.

The home visit program is part of the Community Family Medicine system that has been operating in the Chorotega Region since 2009 and is characterized by a comprehensive approach to people’s health care as well as their family environment and community.

In the Hojancha clinic, Dr. Yorleny Hernandez is the specialist in this type of medicine who is responsible for making house calls on patients, along with a geriatric specialist, to provide them with all types of assistance, including examinations, providing medications and advising the families so that they can learn how to treat elderly people and how to give them treatments and medications.

The assistance program is applied every 15 days on a rotating basis in communities where there are people who need medical care. In Hojancha, the elderly population is more than 600 people, so this program could benefit many more patients in the canton in the future. 

 

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