A story from Moldova…

It was an early December morning. Even with my two warm pullovers and a heavy coat around me I couldn't stop shivering.
When I slowly opened the door to a dirty apartment I was not prepared for what I would find…The smell was appalling. A feeble light came from a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The room was nearly empty and cold, cold...A woman sat in a corner, on a rickety chair, and my impression was she hadn't left it for days. Her eyes stared at me unseeing.

" .....," I tried one of the few words in my Moldavian vocabulary, "hello." She didn't answer immediately. I looked around the room, saw the two wrinkled apples on the windowsill, and stared a moment at the old, worn out mantle and scarf the woman wore to keep warm. The woman's eyes were still empty. Suddenly I understood. She was blind.

With the help of a translator I found out, later, that she was 87 years old… She has been blind for the last 45 years. My Moldovan colleague only found her six months ago. There was no heating. The temperature outside was sometimes 35 degrees below zero. All she had to eat was a few rotten apples. When he picked one apple up it crumbled under the pressure of his hand... The saddest thing about her is that cataracts cause her blindness. For 150 dollars she would be able to see. She has been deprived of her vision for the last 45 years for not having 150 dollars… Elderly people often live in deplorable conditions, not having enough food, having no access to drinking water and proper hygiene. The situation is worse for the elderly, and especially those elderly who are disabled.
In the past decade life expectancy has dropped by 5 years (the average life expectancy of a man is about 59 and a woman 69) while in Western Europe men live to the average age of 79.