The story of a 1200-day party / This is a place to live, not to survive!
Social welfare group of Fars news agency: Kahrizak Institute is a charity center that is only a few days away from its 50th anniversary. This center is a safe center for the elderly and the mentally and physically disabled, and it is trying to provide better quality services to its target community these days. Based on this, since 2016, he established an applied scientific center in his collection and recruited students in fields related to aging and people with disabilities. Today, we sat down with Hassan Ahmadi, the former managing director of the Kehrizak charity organization and the president of the Kehrizak University of Applied Sciences, to talk with him about what is happening in Kehrizak:
Population aging has come to us much earlier
How do you see the importance of paying attention to the elderly and the needs of this spectrum of society, and how has this perspective changed your approach as a charity group?
Today, aging in Iran is creating problems for the society, according to the latest statistics, 10% of the country’s population is made up of the elderly, whose population reaches 8 million people. We have the same number of people with disabilities in our country, and during the last few decades, our elderly population in the country has doubled, and if we follow this path, this population will increase significantly in the next 20 years.
In European countries, it takes about 100 years for the elderly population of a country to double, but in our country, this event will take place in 6 decades, and something must be done to prevent this. The elderly have experience and it is necessary to use their experiences in their old age, it was on this basis that Kahrizak started its work and today, after 50 years since the beginning of the work of this charity group, we came to the conclusion that in the matter of education Our human resources are very backward and it has caused us a challenge, and in this regard, in 2016, the board of directors decided to design and build a university center for training human resources.
Kahrizak University; Courses taught
When did the work of establishing the university actually start?
I am a university professor myself, and I had contacts with the Ministry of Communication Sciences, and we were able to get a license to set up in the same year 2016 Applied Science University in Kahrizak get the Since 2014, that is, two years before the construction and obtaining the license, we have been holding short-term training courses in this center, and finally in Bahman 2016, we were given the license.
First, we started with some associate courses and today we have 11 associate and bachelor courses, of which 5 associate courses are related to hospice affairs and include fields that benefit from our facilities. In total, we have 300 students at Asishgah University, 50% of them are employees, and about 150 other people attend the university from outside the complex. will apply
We also have 2 unrelated associate professors at Asaishgah University, financial management and IT are two fields that are also taught in this university, and so far we have been able to have 150 graduates in different fields.
Increasing the life days of the elderly in Kahrizak
Does the study of students in fields related to the elderly and people with disabilities have an effect on increasing the quality of work?
Before the serious activity of the university and the employment of graduates in the nursing home, our workers had diplomas and sub-diplomas, and the managers of Kehrizak in Karaj and Tehran admit that these students who entered the work increased the quality of work.
Until now, an elderly person lived in a nursing home for an average of 800 days, but this average has reached 1200 days with the efforts of our colleagues, and this was only possible with the efforts of these young and educated forces, and we hope to be able to increase this statistic. Let’s reach 2 thousand days.
Most of these seniors are at an age where they suffer from several serious diseases, they are often more than 70 years old and have many underlying diseases, we are trying to put these seniors under more supervision and with occupational therapy and welfare activities. We can prevent their bed sores and prevent them from taking some of the drugs used to increase their lifespan.
In fact, those who come to the sanatorium have at least 4 to 5 underlying diseases, they may have high blood pressure, blood sugar and even malignant cancers, and we try to treat them.
Some of our departments, such as MS and mental children’s department, do not exist in the Middle East, and these departments of our graduates are present in autism departments, etc., and these students have new experiences.
Do you have any new measures in the university?
We have obtained a license from the Ministry of Health to be able to organize rehabilitation and nursing courses for the elderly and disabled, today our nurses in hospitals cannot provide services to the elderly and disabled, these two spectrums need to identify their behaviors so that these nurses able to provide the right services to the mentioned spectrums, if they give us this permission, we will open a new issue in the country for the disabled and the elderly, so that we will take a series of measures to recognize the disabled cognitively and psychologically and implement appropriate behaviors, with this action a great transformation will occur in the care sector of the elderly and disabled.
What courses are taught at the university?
In the university in professional associate degrees, accounting, financial affairs, business management, information technology – Internet and wide networks, social work, family assistance trends, elderly care, social emergency, physical education, sports coaching trends for the elderly and sports coaching Disabled people and facilitation of community-based rehabilitation are taught.
At the undergraduate level, 4 fields of rehabilitation of mentally disabled people, social work, family assistance trends and social emergency centers and family health management and elderly care are taught, and we have a total of 300 students studying in the university.
We also have short-term trainings that are held in workshops, 224 people have been trained in these courses, and some service companies have also participated in these courses, and 400 hours have been held in the form of introductory courses.
During the two years of the Corona crisis, we have had the least number of casualties, we saw around 70 people die in two sanatoriums during the Corona crisis. They helped us a lot.
We want to be able to develop associate and expert courses in the field of working with sanatoriums, increase our foundation, and the Department of the Welfare Organization of the country can support us and train their human resources for other sanatoriums here. It is important that the country’s 400 sanatoriums can train their forces and personnel in this sanatorium.
Another one of our measures is that we are trying to hold rehabilitation and nursing courses for the elderly, and the Ministry of Health will also help us in this field.
New inventions for sanatoriums; From designing clothes for dementia patients to special training for autism patients
What activities does the research department do in the university?
In addition to the education department, we have the topic of research and technology, and in this regard, we have been able to design valuable researches, and with the University of Tehran, Shahid Beheshti and Behzasti and Payam Noor and Al-Zahra University (pbuh) and Imam Sadiq (pbuh) and We have established good relations with Shahid and Allameh Tabatabai.
These universities have projects in the field of the elderly and disabled, some universities conduct their research at the master’s and doctorate levels in this sanatorium, and so far 42 theses have been sent to this center.
In the university, we have carried out activities in the fields of knowledge base and start-up, we recently started the development of a software and had a plan to empower children with autism disorder, which was designed by one of the colleagues of the same group named Mrs. Mohammadi and Registered and running.
This software is an optical fiber puzzle specially for autistic children. The child is placed in a dark room and since it has an optical fiber, it lights up the dark environment and helps children with autism to concentrate. This action makes children learn skill training sooner and with interest.
In Iran, we do not have special clothes for people with dementia, a patient with this disease may take off his clothes at any moment and cause problems, we designed this special clothes and it has been welcomed. Recently, we have received permission to create an innovation center from the University of Applied Sciences and we are working on it.
We have also designed a localization model for special nursing homes for the elderly and disabled, and in this plan, how should a nursing home be built according to the conditions facing the society? Even in Kahrizak, we have designed this model based on the type of disease, the buildings of our MS patients have special features that must be adapted for them due to the conditions of the type of disease. We even saw some of these rooms and bathrooms. People with veliature cannot travel in them, and this experience of ours has reached other sanatoriums today, and they turn to us for advice on building new sanatoriums.
1750 elderly and disabled people live in nursing homes
Do you have a reference to the statistics of the elderly and disabled in the nursing home?
This year we are on the verge of 50 years of establishment, today 1750 elderly and disabled people live in our boarding center in Tehran and 600 people are also present in Karaj, we have 350 in the home care department in Tehran.
We are trying to increase care at home in the future, because in this case the elderly and disabled can stay at home and we can offer them facilities and services, this action will be cheaper for us and the quality of work will also increase.
The interesting story of the presence of the Minister of Economy of Lebanon in Kahrizak
How are people going to and from the nursing home?
Kehrizak Charitable Asylum has a total of 3,000 charitable women in Tehran who have been working with us since the beginning, some of them prepare goods for Kehrizak and others engage in social and cultural activities, but among them there are 150 people daily. They appear in our collection and do the work of washing the women of the sanatorium.
About 300 men also come to the sanatorium, among them university professors, surgeons, taxi drivers and other professions, but what is important is the constant presence of people by our side and for good.
Before Corona, 7,000 people visited Kehrizak every month, became friends with the elderly and disabled, and read books to them. Every foreign official who comes to the country usually visits Kahrizak, I remember the Minister of Economy of Lebanon came to Kahrizak and wrote to us in a handwritten note: “I saw the cooperation of the nation with the government here.” It is in our notebooks and many things have been written about us.
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