Memory problems are not just signs of old age, there is more to that. Everybody can be forgetful, but if memory loss is something that is worrying you or someone you know, CONTACT US.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia.  Dementia is a collective name for conditions in which progressive degeneration of the brain affects memory, thinking, behaviour and emotion.  Symptoms may include:

• loss of memory
• difficulty in finding the right words or understanding what people are saying
• difficulty in performing previously routine tasks
• personality and mood changes

 

As a result of the little awareness of dementia in the community, people with dementia are being stigmatized, labelled and isolated by the relatives and the community. Some religious groups put people with dementia into bands and chains with the aim of treating the disease. In some areas, due to lack of awareness, people with dementia are burnt to death. A recent case occurred in tema about 50km from Hohoe where a 72 year- old woman was burnt to death by one evangelist, a school teacher and two traders. She traveled from her village to her son in the city not knowing that her son had relocated. She then got confused and was seen roaming around on the streets exhibiting a strange behaviour. As a result she was confronted by her killers and forced to confess to be a witch and was later burnt to death. When her son was interviewed by the news paper (The Daily Graphic), he said; his mother is not a witch however she showed some signs of forgetfulness and old age. Below is the picture of the burnt woman.
[wpspoiler name=”View Her Picture” ]

[/wpspoiler]

There are currently around 1,000 women living in 6 of the witches’ camps in Ghana’s northern region.

Many of them are elderly women who have been accused of inflicting death, misfortune, and calamity on their neighbors and villages through sorcery, witchcraft, or “juju,” a term used throughout West Africa.

The women enjoy a certain degree of protection within these camps, located some distance from their communities in which they could be tortured, beaten to death, or lynched, but the conditions of the camps are often poor. The “accused witches,” as they are sometimes referred to, live in tiny thatched mud huts, and have limited access to food and must fetch water from nearby streams and creeks.

Most of them were sent there due to symptoms such as memory loss, forgetfulness, or disorientation,
which had been misinterpreted to be wichcraft.

An elderly woman who lived in Nabule witch camp in Gushegu a district in the Northern Region for the past 18 years, told the story of how she was forced to leave her village. Dressed in a headscarf, faded T-shirt, and cotton skirt.

Her husband had died unexpectedly and after the village soothsayer had said she caused the death of the child, her family tried to make her confess to murdering him through sorcery. When she refused to admit she was beaten with an old bicycle chain, and later her husband’s family members rubbed pepper sauce into her eyes and open wounds.

It was later realized that she exhibited signs of dementia such as waking up early, increased anxiety, difficulty in remembering, among others.