The National Dementia Program
In 2013, the Ministry of Health, together with other health organizations, including the Amda Association , launched the National Dementia Program.
The vision of the national plan is to enable people with dementia and their families to lead dignified lives, with the assistance of deploying quality and accessible services; to address dementia from the stage of preventing risk factors, through actions for early detection and diagnosis, to treating people at all stages of the disease, until the end of life, while implementing multidisciplinary work and care principles and increasing coordination and cooperation between all those involved.
- Raising public awareness of diseasesAlzheimer's and dementia and preventing the stigma associated with them – This is with the aim of improving the way patients and their families, care providers, decision-makers, and the general public deal with them; encouraging the formulation of a policy that is consistent with the characteristics of the disease and its spread; introducing regular information provision to patients and families by care teams; increasing awareness of measures that support respecting the patient's treatment preferences at the end of life, and more.
- Promoting community health services readiness, which are a central pillar in preventing risk factors, diagnosing, treating, and supporting patients - this is, among other things, with the aim of expanding the tools for coping in each of these areas, and providing the patient with comprehensive treatment tailored to their changing needs at all stages of the disease.
- Promoting the preparation of social services in the community, in order to improve support for patients and their families in light of the mental, health, behavioral and functional deterioration associated with the progression of the disease - primarily through improving care in the field of home nursing care and in the field of day centers.
- Developing effective solutions for direct support for family caregivers, whose physical and mental health is subject to erosion, while seeing them as a target population in their own right – this Through the development of information and emotional support services, the development of frameworks and technologies that help ease the burden of care, assistance in exercising rights (especially employment rights), and more.
- Adapting the long-term nursing care hospitalization services system to actual needs, while ensuring their availability in the various areas and the quality of the care provided in them, as an important link in the continuum of care for patients who cannot continue to live at home.
- Coordination of services for patients and their families, which is one of the main challenges in striving to ensure comprehensive and high-quality care at all stages of the disease, to prevent waste of resources and to assist in maximizing eligibility for services - this is done by integrating and prioritizing the issue of dementia in integrative programs that concern senior citizens.
- Development and expansion of the workforce training system in the community and in hospitalization, as a basic condition for the quality of care provided by health and welfare teams and by nursing care providers, and against the backdrop of a severe shortage of training in the fields of geriatrics in general and dementia in particular – this is done, among other things, by expanding the scope of studies, continuing education and training in medicine and other health professions and in social work; developing dementia-focused training programs for family doctors; allocating resources for training purposes.
- Research and development in the field of dementia Especially in areas that have not been researched, according to an agenda to be determined, and, among other things, based on defining outcome indicators and expanding resources for research.
Ten years after the National Dementia Program was launched, the Knesset Research Department conducted a study on the implementation of the National Dementia Program, at the request of MK Eti Atia (24th Knesset). The report's conclusions are bleak and indicate that "it appears that since the publication of the National Program in 2013, awareness and concern about dementia have indeed increased and certain steps have been taken (for example, Ministry of Health support tests to improve early diagnosis and support for patients' families), but with the exception of a few sections, the program as a whole has not been budgeted for or implemented, and there has been no report on comprehensive, long-term planning and budgeting based on a comprehensive view of needs. Most of the activities carried out were financed from the current budget of the Geriatrics Division in the Ministry of Health, but there is no information on the total budget allocated by the Ministry for dementia patients alone and the rate of utilization of this budget." It appears that the implementation of the recommendations so far has been largely limited to actions that are not very costly, such as training professionals and accompanying family members who are caregivers, rather than to fundamental steps that require extensive budgetary investment, such as establishing diagnostic and treatment infrastructures.
The full report of the Knesset Research Department 2022
The EMDA Association is working in collaboration with the Ministry of Health to ensure that dementia is defined as a national priority issue.
The EMDA Association continues to be the leading organization in Israel in the field of dementia, and works to make information, support, and family guidance accessible to people with dementia throughout the country, in all sectors and populations, in a variety of languages and cultural adaptations.
For collaborations, you can contact Emda's hotline at 8889* or at office@emda-alz.org.il
