Albano (Puglia Region): “The elderly at the center of the vaccination plan”

“Planning is a fundamental step that we will have to translate into concrete steps. I am referring to the vaccination plan that places the elderly at the center of a lifestyle, in an environmental and social complex. Today we have a terrific opportunity because we have the tools. We need to create a link in prevention services. As a Region we must ensure that the national plan is implemented. In this regard it is important to dialogue with associations and communicate. HappyAgeing can count on 7 million members, with the pensioners’ unions, they are about 80% of the elderly in Italy ”. Thus Nehludoff Albano, section Promotion of health and well-being, Puglia Region, in his contribution to the event that was held this morning in Brindisi, entitled “Successful aging: role of vaccines and lifestyles” organized by HappyAgeing (Italian Alliance for active aging) with the Mediterranean Diet Foundation, thanks to the patronage of the Municipality of Brindisi and Federsanità Anci Puglia and with the non-conditioning contribution of Sanofi. “In the coming weeks – explains Albano – Puglia Region wants to make a communication plan identifying professionalism, structures, dedicated tools, otherwise we will only work to chase false news and it becomes difficult to sustain”. Antonelli Incalzi, director of Uoc Gerontology, Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital and former President of Sigg (Italian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology; Stefania Maggi, President of the Mediterranean Diet Foundation and Cnr research manager of the Institute of Neuroscience, Padua-Aging section ; Pietro Luigi Lopalco, full professor of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine, University of Salento and Michele Conversano, president of Cts HappyAgeing. The national health prevention system puts the Regions to relaunch prevention models, among these there are information systems. “With Pietro Luigi Lopalco and Michele Conversano we have created the vaccination registry, a system that is now an important information asset – reminds the regional representative -. We are investing in open monitoring dashboards, in multi-channel systems to call the elderly to vaccination. We have also activated a unique regional information toll-free number, also useful for gathering the needs of the elderly, a series of actions “. – 123 those that will be built in Puglia by 2026 – which must become a reference point for the elderly, but also for the prevention and profiling of subjects. We have activated a working group in the Puglia Region, to remember it also within the region, so that the community house becomes a reference for the elderly ”on all aspects of health. “In community homes – he concludes – general medicine must play its role in close contact with the structures dedicated to prevention for all subjects, first of all the elderly”. National expenditure on prevention, according to the reference models – he recalled at the event – it should be between 3-6%. Italy, also considering the 1.7 billion increase due to the pandemic, reaches 1.6%.