In 2024, more than 30 elderly people have been found dead in their homes, weeks, months or even years after their death, according to a report published Tuesday by the association Les Petits Frères des Pauvres which warns of these “lonely deaths”.
Ces “lonely deaths, which do not only affect the elderly, are the most extreme consequence of social isolation”, underlines in a press release the association which publishes this count each year.
Faced with these “unacceptable situations” and in the absence of official statistics, the association calls on the public authorities to urgently create a “solitary death observatory”. She also calls for “conduct experiments” with banking establishments, the Post Office, energy distributors, Public Treasury services to “test the implementation of an alert system in the event of an anomaly (no movement on bank accounts, more energy consumption, overflowing mailbox, etc.)”.
-Finally, she pleads for a strengthening of the coordination of territorial actors in order to “better identify isolated elderly people” and a development of “neighborhood solidarity”. According to the association’s latest barometer published in 2021, 530,000 people aged 60 and over are in a situation of social death in France.
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