No fewer than 21 medical personnel from 21 tertiary healthcare centres have received special training on geriatric social care for senior citizens.

The director-general, National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC), Emem Omokaro, disclosed this at a dinner to mark the end of the training in Abuja on Wednesday.

Ms Omokaro said the 10-day in-class training was for the first set of training providers, who would, in turn, impact the knowledge on others in their healthcare facilities.

She said the centre had developed a standard national policy on ageing that would strengthen the decision-making process and achieve sustainable growth in the geriatric social care sector in the country.

“I believe this is going to be sustainable in the sense that no political circle can blow it away. That is why when we have a policy on ageing, we took time to develop our national plan of action.

”If you see that document, you will agree with me that for the next ten years, any serious Director-General will have a policy that has already been designed to implement,” she said.

The trainees included geriatricians, consultant family physicians, nurses from federal and state university teaching hospitals, federal medical centres, and the private sector.

Some institutions that benefited from the programme included the University of Calabar Teaching Hospital, Federal Medical Centre Yola, Jos University Teaching Hospital, Mallam Aminu Kano University Teaching Hospital, and Lagos University Teaching Hospital, among others

The participants, trained in specialised areas of social care for older persons, are expected to create a geriatric unit in their respective hospitals to handle cases associated with the ageing population.

Kumbet Sunny, a participant and head of geriatric init, Federal Medical Centre, Keffi, Nasarawa State, said the training allowed him to understand new areas of specialisation with a specific focus on the ageing population.

Another participant, Funke Olukoya, from the University of Ibadan Teaching Hospital, expressed gratitude to the National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC) and the National Board for Technical Education(NBTE) for introducing a new dimension to their profession.

Earlier, the director-general, National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Idris Bugaje, expressed the commitment of the board to foster collaboration with NSCC towards providing technical support that will promote healthy ageing.

(NAN)