After a year without a Coordinator, at the beginning of 2024, Manuel Caldas de Almeida, a doctor with a lot of experience in the areas of ageing and dementia, was designated by the Secretary of State for Health Promotion, to be the new Coordinator of the Executive Committee of the National Health Plan for Dementia. Alzheimer Portugal continues to be part of the Executive Committee, a responsibility that the organisation will continue to embrace with strong commitment. The Dementia Health Strategy remains the same. It “defines the principles that care for People with Dementia must comply with, the criteria to be used in preventive intervention, the measures to be adopted regarding early detection, measures to access medical diagnosis as well as comprehensive diagnosis, and the scaling of therapeutic responses at the three levels of healthcare, clarifying a care pathway for People with Dementia, based on the principles of ethics, proximity, accessibility, equity and continuity.”
Despite the National Health System Reform, which implies the replacement of former structures, the main topics are preserved, such as:
• the informatic registration of the diagnosis at primary and hospital care. This will allow the identification of cognitive disorders and the improvement of the interoperability of information systems among the different levels of care. The final aim is to make possible the definition of an Individual Care Plan tailored to each person with dementia
• the creation of specific units, named “Unidades Coordenadoras Funcionais para as Demências” aiming to assure a better collaboration between the different levels of care and between these and people with dementia, family members and carers, to define the diagnosis and treatment pathways.
Alzheimer Portugal hopes that the promised national awareness campaign on dementia will also take place soon, helping to combat stigma and misconceptions around dementia and people living with Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, as well as their carers / supporters. The organisation also looks forward to the speeding up of the availability of funds for the training/qualification of professionals working in this field. Alzheimer Portugal believes that the Helsinki Manifesto will be of great help for the work of this Executive Committee, not only for its content but also because of the campaign that the organisation will develop within the framework of the Alzheimer Europe Elections Campaign 2024, highlighting that Portuguese policy makers must act in order to recognise dementia as a national priority.
