Elderly, disabled, patients’ rights groups unite to combat discrimination

The federation of patients’ associations (Osak), the confederation of people with disabilities’ organisations (Kysoa), and the third age observatory on Friday announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation and the establishment of a “social alliance” among themselves to mutually combat discrimination.

Third age observatory chairman Demos Antoniou explained that the formation of the alliance is not a “formal” union of the three organisations, but a “public commitment that we will not allow the health, dignity, and human rights of our vulnerable fellow people to be treated as a secondary issue, a cost, or even worse, as a field of political expediency”.

“In Cyprus, as in the whole of Europe, our society is ageing. This is not a problem. It is an achievement. It is the result of better medicine, better conditions, efforts, and sacrifices. However, this achievement is tested when our elderly feel alone, when pensions are not enough, or when access to health services becomes a path laden with obstacles,” he said.

He also insisted that elderly people, disabled people, and patients be treated not as “numbers”, but as people.

“We are talking about the grandmother who cuts off her medication to pay for electricity. We are talking about the grandfather who waits months for an examination while his pain cannot wait. We are talking about the daughter or son who is exhausted, without support, to take care of a person with dementia or a disability,” he said.

To this end, he said the three organisations “do not operate as islands”, and that as such, they are forming the alliance as “a common defence front, a platform for advocacy, an alliance which unites experience, documentation, and people’s voices”.

“Vulnerability does not fit into boxes. An elderly person can simultaneously be a patient, a caregiver, a person with a disability, a person who needs protection from exploitation, discrimination, or mistreatment,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kysoa chairwoman Themida Anthopoulou said that societies change when “institutions unite and demand the obvious: equality, dignity, accessibility, inclusion, life”.

She said the three organisations “are uniting our voices because we represent people who experience systematic and multi-level exclusion every day”.

“Let us say it clearly. This reality is not a random result. It is the result of a lack of holistic policies,” she said.

To this end, she said that “education does not talk to health, health is not connected to social welfare, welfare does not take into account the real everyday lives of people”, and that “the result is a system which shifts the burden onto individuals themselves and their families”.

She said that with this in mind, the new alliance is demanding a meeting with President Nikos Christodoulides so as to be able to present to him “documented priorities and suggestions as equal interlocutors of the state”.

“No society can be called democratic when it leaves behind its most vulnerable … Inclusion is not a concession. It is a contractual, constitutional, and moral obligation,” she said.

Osak chairman Charalambos Papadopoulos said the creation of the new alliance is “based on both the experience we have gained through personal experiences, as well as on the daily contact with the people we represent, and the realisation that the issues of health, disability, and ageing are closely linked and concern the core of social cohesion”.

“Joining forces strengthens our ability to put pressure on the competent bodies and creates a greater weight in the public and institutional dialogue, so that people’s needs are translated into specific decisions and policies,” he said.

He added that the new alliance wishes for “policies which are evaluated, services which operate reliably, and procedures which respect people”.

“We want institutional dialogue with specific goals: equal access to health, reducing delays, quality care, and protecting the most vulnerable from exclusion. For this reason, we will demand to have direct and substantive participation in all consultation processes,” he said.