In mid-December last year, Alzheimer Croatia held the 6th educational conference on Alzheimer's disease - EDUKAL 2020, which surpassed all previous ones in the number of participants. The topic "COVID and dementia" virtually brought together 350 participants, which is 50% more than in previous years.
The conference was divided into four thematic units that discussed the impact of epidemiological measures on life with dementia, the ways in which COVID-19 affects people with dementia, general problems of mental health care and people with dementia and the impact of dementia friendly communities and organisations in Croatia.
Evaluating EDUKAL 2020, the participants said that this conference was one of the best so far. In the conclusions of the conference, they pointed out that the Parliamentary Health Committee should be encouraged to speed up Alzheimer Croatia's proposal for a draft national strategy to combat dementia. They also stated that the City of Zagreb, as a dementia friendly community, should continue to work on developing a local strategy to improve the quality of life of people with dementia, as well as continuing the public service dementia education programme. Furthermore, they recommended that at least one drug that slows the development of dementia be re-requested to be placed on the list of free drugs.
The initiative to ask the competent ministries for support for the implementation of the establishment of dementia-friendly information points, with accompanying education and the development of appropriate information material, was also supported. Finally, the participants were in agreement that is is necessary to extend the MiniCog research, launched by Alzheimer Croatia in the Croatian capital, on cognitive impairment in older people and MoCa testing in nursing homes across the whole country.
