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View of the land where the day centre will be built. L. Cádiz
Construction of dementia day care centre in Benalmádena finally begins after 14-year delay
Health

Construction of dementia day care centre in Benalmádena finally begins after 14-year delay

The long-awaited facility, which will have the capacity for 80 users, will now cost around three million euros to build, double the original estimated cost in 2010

Lorena Cádiz

Benalmádena

Tuesday, 29 October 2024, 09:43

Work on the long-awaited dementia day care centre in Benalmádena has begun on the land that the town hall has donated to local Alzheimer's association, AFA. The facility, which will have a capacity for 80 users, is located between Avenida del Cosmos and Avenida Cerro del Viento in Arroyo de la Miel.

President of the association, Mari Cruz Azuaga, described the start of the project as “a historic day”, a day for which the association had waited for more than 14 years.

Benalmádena council has also provided a grant of 300,000 euros to cover the first phase of the foundation work, although an investment of around three million euros is needed to build the entire centre. The cost of building the centre when it was first proposed in 2010 was estimated at 1.5 million, but as “prices have risen so much, especially in construction, it is now double that”.

“We have a commitment from Malaga's provincial authority that they will help us and we are waiting for the resolution of a very important subsidy that we have requested from the Junta de Andalucía regional government. This aid is very necessary for us,” the president said.

AFA attends to around 40 patients and their families every day in its current ‘memory gym’, all of them residents in Benalmádena and Torremolinos, but there are more than 30 patients on the waiting list for a place at this centre, located in the Plaza Mayor development in Benalmádena.

The association has been appealing for aid for many years to help deal with a disease that has no cure, which, it says, is why day centres like this one in Benalmádena are more than necessary, not only for the patients, but also for their families.

Therapies

The future building will be constructed on a plot of land measuring 2,180 square metres, "with enough space to carry out therapies that are very beneficial for our patients, such as animal therapies or work in the gardens."

The AFA association, which serves people of all ages and at any stage of the disease, said, “It is rare that a day goes by without a family calling us asking about the possibility of a place, but unless one of our patients enters a very advanced stage and the family decides to move them to a nursing home, there are no vacancies. We serve two municipalities and we believe that a larger centre would be a real relief for families.”

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surinenglish Construction of dementia day care centre in Benalmádena finally begins after 14-year delay