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Most of us have at some stage met, or indeed are or have been related to, someone who has Alzheimer’s disease, which adversely affects the memory, and causes many difficulties for both sufferers and their loved ones.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia, a collective name for progressive degenerative brain syndromes which affect memory, thinking, behaviour and emotion. Not an inevitable part of ageing, dementia affects some people only, but the older we are, the higher the probability.
Alzheimer’s and dementia arouse our compassion, and rightly so. However, we should not forget that those thus afflicted, and there are currently 30 million all over the world, this being a relatively common condition affecting older people, can and do lead active lives. These people can and do enjoy a quality of life which might surprise the less well informed.
In an effort to get this message across Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) last year ran a worldwide photo competition. Themed “Active Life with Dementia”, Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) invited entries from amateur and professional photographers worldwide. ADI member associations worldwide were invited to submit photographs from both amateur and professional photographers depicting people with dementia continuing to live a mentally and physically active life after diagnosis.
Among subjects depicted in the award-winning photographs were friends conversing around a table, a man and woman sitting together at a piano, a woman and three children gathered close together and peering through a window. Ordinary enough scenes, and in each, a person with dementia was to be seen, enjoying an active life. Harare amateur photographer Janet Wood was recently delighted to hear that she had won third prize in the amateur category, sharing the honours with Katherine Leong Peck Fun of Malaysia in first place and Theresia Jelmini-Nobel of Switzerland in second. — Our Correspondent.
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