The University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus Dominica will host the Tenth Annual UWI Open Campus Dominica Bernard A. Sorhaindo Memorial Lecture on Thursday, August 17, 2017 commencing at 7:00 p.m. at the Fort Young Hotel Conference Room.
The Lecture will be presented by Dr. Joan Rawlins, Medical Sociologist and retired Senior Lecturer in the Department of Para-clinical Sciences at UWI St. Augustine. Dr. Rawlins will speak on the topic: “Ageing in the Caribbean: The Reality, Challenges and Opportunities”.
The presentation will tackle issues such as the biology of ageing that will seek clarify how sound and healthy choices in early years affect quality of life later on. Dr. Rawlins will also highlight key social factors of ageing such as the inevitable changes, elderly care and financial security.
This lecture series is named after Dr. Bernard Sorhaindo, Dominica’s first graduate of The UWI and one of the country’s most celebrated medical doctors. Dr. Sorhaindo was an advocate for the availability of proper health care facilities and personnel in order to improve the quality of life of Dominicans.
The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will provide an opportunity for guests to listen to the speaker present for about 40 minutes.
Following the presentation, guests will be able to interact and to generate meaningful discussions about the influence of the topic on Dominica and the Caribbean region.
At 75 I no longer drive in Dominica after dark and therefore will have to forego listening “to the speaker present” and the “meaningful discussion” that follows. But for what it’s worth, here’s my contribution to the debate.
My concern is not for those who are spent in years but for the dreary young people who are spent mind. My Dominican friends, my age and older, live a life that would leave most of those I know in their twenties breathless.
Those of us in the creative arts are fortunate because as our bodies get older are minds get younger. As a painter, sculptor and inventive engineer, I am now attempting work that I would not have dared to contemplate in earlier times.
When one octogenarian was asked if she thought more provision should be made for the elderly she answered, “Yes, because after all I’ll be old myself one day!”