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Clinic for the aged opened at medical college

Staff Reporter

It provides regular free check-ups and counselling

BERHAMPUR: A preventive geriatric clinic was inaugurated on MKCG Medical College Hospital campus on Friday.

Professor of community medicine from All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Vir Singh inaugurated the special clinic for aging public in the presence of R.N. Behera of the UNICEF, principal of the medical college S.R. Patnaik and its superintendent T. Sahu.

This clinic would be open on every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It would be managed by the Department of Community Medicine at the college.

At the clinic, the aged patients would be provided regular free check-ups and counselling to maintain their health.

Apart from it, persons approaching old age would also be advised on way to delay the aging process through proper diet and healthy lifestyle. Medical advice would be provided for diseases common with old age like hypertension, diabetes, osteoarthritis, diminishing power of sense organs, gastro-intestinal and genito-urinary diseases.

Prof. Singh said the need of such clinics increased with the rise in the average life span of people living in our country. By 2010, the number of persons over 60 years of age would reach around 10 crores.

The problems of gerontology or old age fall into four major categories. Social and economic problems, psychological aspects of aging, which include intellectual performance and personal adjustment, physiological bases of aging, along with pathological deviations and disease processes, and general biological aspects of aging.

It is observed that a large number of pathological changes occur among older people and an understanding of the aging process leads to less disease in the elderly.

Members of the department said they would utilise the methodologies of many scientific and medical disciplines to minimise the disabilities and handicaps of old age.

A number of senior citizens of the city also reached the clinic on its inaugural day to get themselves checked up by experts.

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