Have we really come so far?

Reports this week in the papers regarding the care (or rather the lack of care) of patients with Alzheimers in some hospital wards where they are being treated. There is apparently very little scope for enhancement or collusion towards making these patients lives that much better. Some have not been out of the ward for more than six years. There are no facilities for exercise or even for walking around a garden. There are no activities for these people to put their minds to. So what is left but a miserable existence where the only highlight of their days are the meals and going back to bed again. It rather reminds of the dark old days of the mental home institutes where people were placed there simply because society didn't know what else to do with them and how to treat them. Nowadays there are guidelines and locksmiths and specific programmes to enable alzheimer's sufferers to improve or become that much more independent and to actually enjoy life, even if it means being wheeled around a garden in the sunshine.
What it comes down to is basic budget and priorities. Society still hold out as a general rule that alzheimers sufferers can no longer contribute to the community, are no longer needed to, should be placed somewhere out of sight and therefore out of mind, left to dwell in the confused memories of their lives until they die, but without much help from anyone else because it is too painful to care, to embarrasing to care, to expensive to care, too time consuming to care and too emotionally draining to care.
Therefore whatever care they get is given under minimum budget, to cover the basic necessities of living without giving life and enjoyment.
As the elderly population increases and the fact that there'll be more alzheimers sufferers in the future, we need to start thinking now of how society can help those sufferers in the future to have a life and enjoy it as well as they can, else we once again see the desperate and detestable places the mental institutions of old were.
We are in danger of repeating the mistakes of our ancestors when we believe we are in a society that has moved on, become more advanced and knowledgeable, yet we only attend to those who shout the loudest.