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[Translated] In Belgium, we are immensely lucky that our health care system is based on solidarity. It is important that this continues and is even strengthened to avoid inequalities.

Both my parents died in a nursing home. I believe that had there been appropriate in-home care available outside of the hours of 9am to 5pm that my mother might have been able to live at home. As it was she suffered a severe fall at night and was admitted to hospital and declined there to the point that she required full-time care. The cost of overnight carers was exorbitantly expensive. The government should put more resources into providing high quality home care which doesn’t end at 5pm when patients are most vulnerable

[Translated] Support and training for family caregivers is needed in many ways.

[Translated] Do not forget to correlate loss of functional independence with disease. Do not forget that 30% of dementias can be prevented and that frailty is preventable and reversible: prevention must also be funded.

[translated] Let’s not abandon the elderly, they do not deserve that.

[translated -excerpt, emphasis in original text] Home-based assistance offered by the Romanian state to older people DOES NOT EXIST. This is unacceptable. […] for sick people and the elderly the situation is extremely BAD. There is no help. No state funded services to help them at home or in an institution, facilities for the elderly are so bad they are more like prisons or labour camps. I also strongly advise you to do a study and personal visits to psychiatric hospitals, and how mental health is treated in Romania.

[Translated] There are now already too few caregivers and nothing is done about it! How will that be in 10 years ?!

[Translated] I would not want my future to be in the hands of politicians but in the hands of qualified experts.

[Translated] I am curious about the results… It is important to increase the prestige and financial value of care at home! Explore even more possibilities for care in old age… (shared housing, generation parks and others)

I visit my stepmother who is in a wheelchair after a severe stroke 14 years ago. She can cope with the costs of care so I can see the restrictions she faces even when there is sufficient money. She is physically but not mentally disabled. She is unable to use a smart phone or an I-pad and needs 24 [hour] help. She cannot use even disabled toilets. Access into taxis is difficult and impossible in a private car.