By The Star Staff
Sens. Marissa Jiménez Santoni and Keren Riquelme Cabrera on Thursday called upon nonprofit groups to help address the historic number, some 494 in 2023, of older adults abandoned in medical and hospital facilities in Puerto Rico.
At a summit meeting of leaders of nonprofit organizations in Carolina, the New Progressive Party senators requested the creation of a registry of older adults in each community as a mechanism to provide help services to each person in the social sector, which exceeds 770,000 inhabitants, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau in 2022.
“Doing things as we have is not the solution; we have to think ‘outside the box.’ The number of nearly 4,000 older adults abandoned in hospitals since 2017, with about 494 last year alone, tells us that we must look for alternatives to address this situation,” Jiménez said. “Nonprofit groups, the faith-based sector, play a central role in many activities that the government cannot enter. Today, we are calling on you, the leaders of that sector in the various communities of the Carolina Senatorial District, to carry out a census of the needs of older adults in our communities to satisfy them in the best way possible.”
“Taking a census of the needs of older adults in the communities where they are served by churches and entities, and identifying their support network, is very important to prevent them from being left alone, abandoned in a hospital. This is an area that we have been working on since mid-2022,” Riquelme added. “Although I recognize that the problem is complex, I believe that the third sector can contribute enormously to reducing this historic figure of almost 500 abandoned seniors. With the registry and census of needs to establish a help plan, we will know those people aged 60 or over who need special help or a support network. Together with the Family Department and other agencies, we will provide tools and training to entities and churches so that they can be that resource in case an older adult does not have a support group and ends up in a hospital.”
The meeting, which lasted several hours, was the initiative of Family Secretary Ciení Rodríguez Troche and included the participation of Office for Socioeconomic and Community Development of Puerto Rico Executive Director Thais Reyes Serrano; Gov. Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia’s adviser on faith-based issues, Pastor Luis Roig; and staff from the departments of Justice, Housing and the Office of the Women’s Advocate, as well as the American Association of Retired Persons, among others.
Jiménez said the summit was the first of a series of similar meetings to, in addition to the registry, identify other alternatives for avoiding the abandonment of the island’s senior citizens.
“Those men and women who built modern Puerto Rico deserve no less,” she said.
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