Aerial view of the future Alzheimer village which will be delivered in June 2019 in the Landes. – ArchiGraphi
The opening of the Village Landais Alzheimer, originally scheduled for early April, had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 epidemic. But after
two years of work and the passage of the health crisis, the Village
Alzheimer’s in Dax (Landes), a unique facility in France entirely dedicated to welcoming people with the disease, announced Thursday that it will receive the first of its 120 patients from June 11.
Unique in France, the Village, supported by the Landes departmental council, is “conceived as a real village, spread over an area of five hectares”, according to Vincent Galibert, the director of the public interest group which is piloting the project. Conceived in its architecture as a Landes village grouping country houses, it is organized in four districts grouping four households of 300 m2 each and which can accommodate seven to eight people.
Caregivers and caregivers observed around 40
With its café-restaurant, its performance hall, its food store and even its hairdressing salon, it must allow the people it welcomes to continue their daily lives in optimal reception conditions. The objective is clearly set: to put the patient in the center of the device to allow him to live a normal life.
At this time, the equipment will not operate at cruising speed. Covid-19 forced the Village to review the organization of admissions and, at least for a time, the operation of the site. External people, for example, will not yet be able to take advantage of shops and services, and volunteer external workers will also have to wait. The caregivers and the nursing staff returned on May 11 to observe a quarantine. The admission of patients, who will have been tested, will take place over a month.
The project spurred on by former Landes minister and boss Henri Emmanuelli, who died in 2017, has a cost of € 29 million. It is inspired by a similar initiative set up in Weesp, near Amsterdam.
