COVID Pandemic Challenges Catholics Regarding How to Provide Better Care for Our Elders
Experts tell the Register that the tragedy of the death and suffering the health crisis has inflicted on U.S. seniors spotlights the need to implement new models that can better protect their health and dignity.
Mary Beth Bonacci thought she and her siblings had done everything possible to find a safe place for their 88-year-old mother to live, but all went horribly wrong when they learned she had been found dead outside her care facility.
For Bonacci, her mother’s death, after prolonged exposure to sub-freezing temperatures, opened a window into a broken elder-care system in need of significant retooling.
“I am discovering the enormous problems we face in senior care, particularly in the era of COVID,” Bonacci wrote in a heart-rending column.
Even before her mother died in January, Bonacci had taken her 97-year-old father out of an independent-living facility and moved him into her own home after a COVID outbreak had caused him to be even more isolated.