UK firm showcases building model for elderly care

A 3D model of specialist healthcare provision for the elderly. INSET:  Mel Fairbourn-VarleyBy Denise Marray/GT Correspondent/LondonA United Kingdom-based company has showcased a site specific model for specialist healthcare provision for the elderly in Doha. The 15-storey tower featured daycare and leisure facilities for the elderly in the podium, above which are  family living apartments.A post-hospital therapy care unit is integrated into the design alongside a family health centre which it is estimated could serve a population of between 10,000 and 20,000 local residents. The kind of elderly care environment DWA Architects of York, United Kingdom, envisages for Qatar is based on a humanist model developed in Holland which integrates specialist services into family housing and specially designed apartments. The idea is to provide assisted living provision and services in a situation that affords family members close access to their elderly relatives with 24/7 rehabilitation and therapy services provided on site.There is an ever growing demand worldwide for specialist healthcare provision for the elderly. Services can take the form of assisted living, appropriate medical, including post-operative, care and leisure activities. DWA Architects of York is a company with over 25 years of expertise in this field. It has established a strong reputation in the UK through its work on over 270 elderly and post-operative care projects. Now the company is keen to broaden its reach internationally and has a particular focus on the Middle East. Mel Fairbourn-Varley, DWA director of international projects, undertook two years of research into the kind of elderly care programmes that would suit the cultures of the Middle East. His company has pooled its findings with research into elderly care provision in Egypt undertaken by Age Concern International, based in The Netherlands, and in Luxor, upper Egypt. The two organisations have developed an operational and architectural model specifically designed for the Arabian Gulf region. Fairbourn-Varley said that he has received a largely negative response when talking to bankers in the Arabian Gulf about securing funding for building elderly care facilities. He said that in Bahrain particularly he encountered resistance to the concept of taking care for the elderly outside of the immediate family circle. “We found that the response was quite curt; the inference was, ‘why on earth are you looking at this as an issue when it is the job of families to take care of elderly people in this part of the world?’,” he explained. However, he observed that through his research in the Arabian Gulf and Egypt, it is clear that many families trying to juggle working lives and family responsibilities in today’s highly pressured and competitive economies are finding the demands of looking after elderly relatives a great challenge. He said that when he spoke to gerontologists on the ground, particularly in Egypt and the UAE, many privately conceded that they were sitting on a ‘ticking time bomb’. The demand for places on the gerontology hospital wards was very high, they said, as health systems have little alternative but to care for elderly people within hospital environments throughout the emirates and Egypt, with demand far exceeding provision.He noted that some wealthy families in the Gulf liked to build an annexe for their elderly relative onto their villas and employ nurses from overseas to be on hand around the clock. But this, he said, was not ideal as frequently the nurses were not specialists in elderly care and often did not speak a word of Arabic.