Violence and abandonment are the reality that hundreds of senior citizens face in Costa Rica. Many of the cases of abandonment occur in the public hospitals, situation that complicates even more the crowded system that already suffers with the number of beds available.

Last year a total 127 senior citizens were abandoned in hospitals according to the Social Security system (CCSS); the elderly in abandonment must wait in the hospital until there is a space available in an elderly home or shelter, this can take months.

Sometimes the senior citizens are brought in to the emergency service with a health problem, they are admitted and when they are ready to go back home no one shows up to pick them up. Other times they are simply left in the entrance of the hospital.

According to Teresita Aguilar, president of the Social Management Unit of the National Council for the Senior Citizens (Conapam) in statements given to Columbia radio news, their service is saturated, out of the 127 elderly abandoned, only 70 have been relocated; “the requests for relocations continue to grow; there is no conscience in the families of their responsibility to care for their elderly. The majority of this senior citizens suffer of Alzheimer’s or similar conditions and the families take advantage ot this”.