Elderly call for improved conditions

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, together with the comprehensive health care it the offered its citizens, elderly people in the mountainous state of Kyrgyzstan are increasingly feeling sidelined by a system that no longer cares. "I bought an apartment in Soviet times and lived well. I planned to live on a fairly-earned pension," Svetlana Valentinovna told IRIN in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. But following independence and the introduction of a new national currency - the som - the 78-year-old soon saw her plans fall apart. "My pension was not sufficient for anything," she cried. Adding to her pain, her own son deceived her by selling her home with a promise of taking his elderly mother in afterwards. "Now I have to live in a nursing home. I have nowhere else to go," she said. While such stories are hardly unusual - even by Western standards - they continue to strike a nerve in traditional Kyrgyzstan - a society that has long prided itself for its attitudes towards the elderly. During Soviet times, such cases were unheard of, and women like Valentinovna were well cared for either by their families or by the country's well resourced health-care system. That all changed in 1991, however, when the nation became independent and the newly established government found itself grappling with a transition to a market economy. With such a problem to face, care for the elderly was not high on the government's agenda. That same year, Doronina Polina, an otherwise healthy and vigorous woman, decided to move into a nursing home, only to die 10 years later of chronic illnesses she caught there. "She was promised to have a good meal, even a chicken broth for dinner. However, all that changed after Kyrgyzstan's sovereignty. When we took some food for her, she refused it, explaining that 'after your normal food, I cannot eat the local food, so you had better not bring any more'," her cousins, Irina and Svetlana told IRIN. Of Kyrgyzstan's 5 million inhabitants, some 436,000 can be described as elderly. Sadly, half of them live below the country's poverty line, never having imagined the injustice they were now facing given the contributions they had earlier made to their country's socialist pension scheme. With little or no pension to sustain them, many die, very few of them of natural causes. At the nursing home to which Valentinovna is seeking admission there are 276 residents - mostly aged between 60 and 75. The oldest is Olga Luganskaya, who is 100. About 70 percent of the residents are ethnic Russians, the rest Kyrgyz. Vladimir Klimayev, at 61, is one of the younger residents, and has lived here for the last five years. "When doctors informed me that I had cataracts, I decided to come here, because I had nobody to look after me," he told IRIN. And although the state-funded facility is one of the best in the country, living conditions - not to mention access to health care - leave much to be desired. "The standard daily allocation for nutrition per day is [the equivalent of] about 70 US cents. However, this sum is far from satisfactory for the minimum food basket," Tatyana Doynikova, an accountant working at the home, told IRIN. "We have to purchase some additional foodstuffs, because what is provided here is insufficient," complained Ivan Kuzmin, a 77-year old resident. "During Soviet times, the house inhabitants used to have four meals a day, but now we only get two. My pension is US $10 and I need medicine as well. I don't have enough money to have both food and medicine." Meanwhile, strapped for cash, state officials do what they can with minimal resources, often keeping people four to a room. Senior therapists and other workers at the home earn just $18 a month. "There is no free medical aid here. Surgery centres are forced to purchase medicine in order to conduct operations," Aisha Moldalieva, a therapist at the home, told IRIN. "Soon winter will start, the most difficult time of the year for the patients. Many of them have chronic bronchitis. There is no money for treatment," she explained, confirming that many of the facility's residents suffered from chronic diseases requiring regular treatment, but had pensions insufficient to pay for it. House residents said foreign citizens occasionally visited them with gifts of food, medicine and clothing, but such events were intermittent, adding what the home really needed was help on a regular basis.