Imagine losing your memory, your ability to think and to make judgment calls not just for a day – but permanently. Most types of dementia begin gradually and worsen progressively over several years, with the symptoms it causes not being able to be turned back or even stopped.

At first its symptoms may be mild and might just be forgetfulness or lapses of memory. However, as dementia becomes worse, its symptoms will become more obvious, severe and interfere with the ability to take care of one’s self. This disease is what I’d like to call “the silent torturer” because it rips away your valued memories and, in extreme cases, also manages to take away one’s self-assurance.

Having experienced it at first-hand for a number of years, the harsh truth is dementia sufferers live the rest of their lives on a day-to-day basis. The realisation helps me to understand better their need for support and their calls for assistance.

It saddens you when the ones closest to you need constant attention because they cannot be left alone for fear that they might hurt or injure themselves. What is more depressing and heartbreaking is when your loved ones cannot even remember who you are.

Thus, being a relative of someone who suffers from the condition and the only Maltese MEP and member of the European Alzheimer’s Alliance, I have voiced concerns on various occasions about the hardships the patients and their loved ones go through, both at a national and European level. Alas, for too long, our cries for help had fallen on deaf ears.

At a recent press conference however, Parliamentary Secretary Franco Mercieca announced that the government has plans to assist the 5,200 patients suffering from dementia, a figure that will increase to 14,000 in the next 25 years. He also appointed researcher and university lecturer Charles Scerri to draw up a national strategy to combat this cruel condition. This strategy, which has long been overdue, is expected to be ready by the end of the year and means that, as per its electoral manifesto, the Labour government is committing itself to help improve the conditions of patients and their families.

The draft strategy, which will be presented for public consultation with the main stakeholders, including the relatives of dementia patients, will replace the draft of the national dementia strategy presented by the previous government in January 2010 and which was quickly shelved.

On behalf of all sufferers of this disease and their loved ones, I would like to first and foremost express our thanks to Dr Mercieca and the government for hearing our cries for help. I am delighted that Dr Scerri, who was the very first person I met when I took office in the European Parliament, has been entrusted with drafting this strategy – for I know he is qualified and extremely dedicated to help the victims of dementia. There is no one better for the job.

I am sure that that the new strategy will be drafted without the interference of any partisan issues and that it will be implemented in an effective manner to ease the pain of those in need; those which Labour administrations have after all always strived to alleviate. For it is engrained in our core beliefs, that these are the ones who should be the focus of our decisions.

N.B. The European Alzheimer’s Alliance, who I happen to be collaborating with at the moment, is organizing an international conference in Malta about Dementia in October.

Mr Cuschieri is head of the Maltese delegation in the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and member of the EAA (European Alzheimer’s Alliance)

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