In 2018, the Rosa María Vivar Foundation promoted a new day center for the Baix Camp Alzheimer’s Association
The Rosa María Vivar Foundation (FRMV) already has a new project on its hands: cognitive stimulation workshops. The recipients, however, will not be people with Alzheimer’s or other neurocognitive disorders. The goal is to reach everyone. Starting in September, the FRMV will launch a campaign to raise awareness in society and promote the need “to take care of our cognitive health from childhood and throughout life”, in the words of Anna Martorell, manager of the Foundation.
“We cannot prevent the appearance of a neurodegenerative disease, but we can give the brain tools in order to continue cognitive functions for as long as possible within normality; give him strategies to delay the symptoms”, considers Martorell, who emphasizes that the brain should be trained “just like going to the gym”. For this reason, it is intended to carry out these activities aimed at people without previous pathologies.
“Where the affectation appears, if the brain has worked on plasticity and has generated resistance, it will have designed a strategy to better face the disease. We will not avoid it, but the symptoms will appear later and we will enjoy a quality of life for a longer time”, details the manager.
The FRMV was born in 2018 with a very specific objective: to provide a solution to the space problems of the day center of the Association of Alzheimer’s and Other Neurocognitive Disorders of Reus and Baix Camp. It was then that the children of Rosa María Vivar, a doctor who had self-diagnosed Alzheimer’s, started an ambitious project so that users, including her mother, could have new and better facilities.
The difficulties were not limited to the demanding schedule – seven months after the start of the works, an open day had already been held – but rather the new day center had to be “pioneering”. “It is made specifically to locate Alzheimer’s patients. For the design, the type of users that have to go has been taken into account, “says Martorell. A wooden structure that does not give “the feeling of being in a health center”, the presence of independent gardens to enjoy nature and continue therapy, the division of users into modules according to the degree of disease they have. .. Everything is thought.
Since the reception of the first users in December 2019, the day center continues to operate under the management of the Alzheimer’s Association. The tasks of the FRMV, however, are not over. Now begins the second phase of the infrastructure project. «There is a space on the land that has been left free and that the foundation is designing; thinking about what complementary services in the center are necessary”, details Martorell. “We are studying it with the Department of Health to define what the territory needs,” he adds.
Against the effects of cancer
The FRMV does not want to limit itself to Alzheimer’s, but also has other projects focused on cognitive health, such as assistance to women who have suffered from breast cancer. “We have been able to detect that this group, as a result of cancer treatment, have cognitive alterations that affect their recovery. Once the treatment is over, or during it, they continue to suffer from memory difficulties or alterations,” says the manager. Trouble remembering people’s names, what they just did…
“Doctors focus on caring for the disease and these are symptoms that, as they are temporary and minority, they say will pass, but it can really take years and they have difficulties leading their lives normally, and much more in their reintegration into work », he points out.
As a result of the study, the foundation designed an online cognitive stimulation workshop. “Women had been suffering from these symptoms for years and thought they had Alzheimer’s, when they didn’t, that’s temporary. With a workshop, it is reversible”, concludes Martorell.
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