A new policy briefing ‘Dementia, lessons learned from Qatar’, co-authored by ADI’s Paola Barbarino and Chris Lynch, along with local experts, has been launched during WISH 2020 (World Innovation Summit for Health).
This policy briefing highlights the status, recent developments, research trends and policy, and successes and challenges in the area of dementia in Qatar, while also referring to the progress and challenges across the globe, and provides recommendations to achieve better outcomes.
ADI’s Chief Executive Paola Barbarino spoke on a panel at the summit, in which she discussed some of the lessons learned from the experience of Qatar, which in 2018 launched a national dementia plan. She said:
This policy briefing is particularly relevant to those planning dementia care policy in the Middle East, but it has reverberations throughout the region and globally. In spite of continuing challenges, the commitment of Qatar to becoming dementia friendly and addressing issues surrounding care is apparent. The lessons learned from Qatar should be shared on the global stage, and this is why I am so thankful to the WISH Qatar organisers and my report co-authors.
The main recommendations of the report include:
- Improving health and social care for persons with dementia and their carers
- Facilitating help-seeking before dementia is at the advanced stages by combating stigma and misinformation
- Creating dementia-friendly spaces and social support for older persons
- Mitigating the burden on families by providing more advice and support throughout the caregiving journey
- Establishing a baseline of epidemiological and social data to support service planning and prevalence of dementia
- Developing more specialised human resources in geriatric psychiatry and gerontology health and social care professionals
