John & Nula Suchet Rutland Great Dementia Conversation

John and Nula Suchet launched Rutland's Great Dementia Conversation

Transcript

00:00 I'm here at Victoria Hall in Oakham this afternoon with John and Nuala Soushe,

00:08 both of whom are here to present a, well it's a kind of a presentation isn't it,

00:15 about the onset of dementia and the problems that that causes. John, Nuala,

00:21 please tell me why it is that you feel you need to do this today. Well we are

00:25 very supportive of Alicia Kearns's campaign here to make Rutland the first

00:32 truly dementia-friendly county in England. We both lost our spouses to

00:38 dementia and that's how we met because they were both in the same care home and

00:42 the word is still not out there enough. There is not enough help for the person

00:49 with dementia. Diagnosis is a major problem and there is definitely not

00:54 enough help for carers of people with dementia. So we are fully supportive of

00:59 Alicia's campaign to make Rutland dementia-friendly and all we can say is

01:03 it's a delight to launch it for her and we just hope it becomes nationwide.

01:08 Now how do you think that this kind of campaign can, obviously it's going to bring

01:12 awareness of dementia to the people in Rutland, but to make Rutland a

01:17 dementia-friendly county, that's a big ask. It is a big ask but I think the big

01:22 thing about dementia is that it's not often diagnosed and people live in

01:27 this you know cloudy mind for like several years and the relatives even

01:34 don't know it's dementia they just think oh it's age or they're getting older or

01:38 they've forgotten something but diagnosis is a big thing we need to get

01:41 people diagnosed and we need to get dementia language out there because it's

01:46 still the outcast of diseases I think. You said earlier to me that this is one

01:51 of those diseases that is affecting a large number of the population as the

01:57 population grows older. What are the numbers? It affects one in three people

02:03 one in three people in the UK will get dementia in their lifetime and at some

02:08 time in their lifetime and you know over a million in the UK have dementia at the

02:14 moment and there really isn't enough support you know centres, carers, Admiral

02:21 you know nurses who come in and help you and the big thing for me is doctors are

02:26 not really trained in dementia they know very little about it I think they do it

02:30 like half an hour's training in dementia in the whole of their six years training

02:34 and I feel that needs to be highlighted as well. Well let's hope that today's

02:39 speech that you're going to give will raise that awareness within the county

02:44 of Rutland and let's see what you have to say and thank you very much for

02:49 taking the time to come here to Rutland today to let the people know that this

02:53 is something that we can help them with. Thank you very much indeed.