Thirty-five years ago, the Friends of the Sick and the Elderly in Gozo (VO/0066), a non-profit philanthropic NGO also known as The Friends, was inaugurated by the amalgamation of three hospital-oriented NGOs. In its early days it gave co-operative assistance to other developing NGOs and charitable institutions in Gozo. It is a founding member of the Malta Health Network and the Gozo NGOs Association and, for many years, the FSEG has been representing Gozo in the National Council for the Elderly (KNA).
In its first 15 years the FSEG had two volunteer groups visiting regularly the elderly and psychiatric patients in long-term institutional residence to comfort them socially. But the NGO's main activity was an institution-centred donation project to facilitate the procurement of truly needed items that were difficult to obtain expeditiously (or at all) through the then current official bureaucratic routine procedures that depended on strict minimal budgets. During its first 20 years of activity (1988-2008) the FSEG provided the Gozo hospital and institutions for the elderly with many needed and desirable items of equipment that were lacking, inadequate or insufficient for good quality care. In total, it formally presented about 100 donations, some multiple. Initially misunderstood by some, this donation project was highly appreciated by the recipient organisations and the public.
In the year 2000, the FSEG proposed the establishment of a Meals-on-Wheels service for the house-bound elderly in Gozo. It donated a brand new van for the purpose to the Ministry for Gozo and entered a Public-Private Partnership with it and the Moviment Azzjoni Socjali. For 18 years the MAS produced the meals and the FSEG delivered them daily, including Sundays. In April 2018 the Ministry for Gozo assumed full management, thus establishing Meals-on- Wheels as a stable government service. Today, three-course cooked meals are still being delivered daily to many homes all over Gozo for €2.33 a meal.
In 2009, the FSEG embarked on a community-based loan project instead of the hospital-based one. During the last 15 years it developed a popular Equipment Loan Service for bed-bound sick or elderly people in the Gozo community. Electronic nursing beds, patient hoists, recliners and armchairs, together with pulse-air mattresses, portable oxygenators, commodes, wheelchairs, walking aids and other assistive items, are loaned for as long as necessary, sometimes for years, to people in their own homes against an affordable voluntary donation. Currently, 873 items of loaned equipment are circulating in about 500 homes all over Gozo. Requests for assistance are frequent and the periodic purchase of new items is necessary to replace old or damaged equipment and to avoid long waiting lists building up. Since the start, over 2,600 grateful families have benefitted from this service in the privacy of their home with much relief of patient discomfort and carer toil.
By providing needed equipment, the FSEG encourages family members to care for their own sick and elderly relatives in their familiar environment, where they would rather be in the evening of their lives. It promotes familial solidarity by empowering embattled caregivers to persevere in the arduous task involved in keeping bedridden people in comfort and serenity. Incidentally, by making it possible for many bedridden people to be nursed in their own homes, this equipment loan service is helping the space-limited Gozo hospital to overcome the notorious problem of unnecessary and wasteful bedspace occupancy for long periods by so- called "social cases". The FSEG's assistance is frequently sought by hospital staff to make it possible for them to expedite the discharge home of inpatients that do not need to remain in hospital if nursing care facilities are available in their home. In this way, the equipment loan service is directly saving hospital expenditure on unnecessary bed occupancy, saving hospital bedspace for urgent and scheduled admissions and indirectly reducing operation waiting lists.
The FSEG raises funds through membership fees, charity sales, meals, donations and bequests. Gratefully acknowledged were donations from the Gozo Ministry, the MCCF, the MMDNA and Rotary Gozo. The Friends thank particularly 101-year-old Sonja Sinclair Stevenson- Lindblad, who organised 12 fund-raising music recitals and dinners on each of her last 12 birthdays! Thanking also its many other benefactors, especially past and present loyal volunteers, the FSEG is now planning to provide additional services to the community.
Friends of the sick and elderly in Gozo (FSEG) are full members of Malta Health Network
www.maltahealthnetwork.org / www.fsegozo.org