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 I thought to myself that she hadn’t left it for days. Her eyes stared at me unseeing.

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

There was no heating. The temperature outside can reach 35 degrees below zero. All she had to eat were a few rotten apples. When my colleague picked up one of the apples, it crumbled under the pressure of his hand. With the help of a translator, I found out that the woman was 87 years old. She has been blind for the last 45 years. My Moldovan colleague found out about her situation six months ago. The saddest thing about her is that cataracts caused 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 such a small sum of money.

Many elderly live in deplorable conditions without access to running water, sufficient food, proper sanitation, heating, and medical services.

In the past decade life expectancy has dropped by 5 years. The average life expectancy of a woman is about 69 and a man is 59. A healthy man in Western Europe lives to the average age of 79. That is a 20 year difference.