In Brazil, a hug curtain has been installed in a retirement home in São Paulo to allow elderly people to hug their loved ones through plastic protection and thus avoid the risk of Covid contagion.
- In Brazil, a hug curtain has been put up in a retirement home in Sao Paulo.
- It allows the elderly to hug their loved ones without risk of contamination.
- A similar initiative was introduced at the end of May in a nursing home in northern France.
A nice alternative to the loneliness imposed on the elderly by the coronavirus epidemic. In Brazil, the country in the world with the most deaths (42,720) and infected people (850,514), behind the United States, a hug curtain has been installed in a retirement home in Sao Paolo. The aim is to allow seniors to hug their loved ones through plastic protection to avoid contagion.
Residents and visitors must don long black protective gloves with long sleeves that reach up to the shoulders before slipping their arms into the large pockets of the plastic curtain. After use, the latter is scrupulously disinfected by caregivers.
“When we saw that this pandemic was going to last a long time, we had to find a safe way for families to see residents and for the elderly to know that their loved ones were thinking of them”explains Maira Martins, occupational therapist at the retirement home, to AFP.
A plastic bubble in an nursing home in northern France
In France, a similar initiative was set up free of charge in an Ehpad in Bourbourg (Nord), on May 26. It was a beige sphere almost three meters high flanked by inflatable airlock spheres in the shape of cylinders. The structure was designed by the company Bubble Tree.
This is “a bubble of happiness, a room where families really feel together, separated only by a flexible and completely transparent wall of 30/100and mm thick”testified Audrey Bernard, director of the establishment in 20 minutes at the time of the inauguration.
“We wanted to give a human dimension to a totally inhuman situation, while guaranteeing safety, the non-communication of any viral load whatsoever”said the boss of Bubble Tree, Pierre-Stéphane Dumas.
The company hadalready developed solutions for people with reduced mobility, intended for public reception and meeting all health and technical standards”. In this context, the structureallows total bacteriological isolation, with zero air exchange from one volume to another (…), a world first”he assured.
The benefits of hugs
The health benefits of hugs have been scientifically proven since World War II. “At that time, abandoned children did not receive hugs from orphanage staff. Many were the babies who stopped feeding and sleeping until they died in some cases. Doctor John Bowlby became the first doctor to understand the importance of hugs and physical contact from an early age to help children not only survive, but also grow and become independent”, explains the doctor Claire Lewandowski at Why Doctor.
Many studies on the subject have since been published. A study published in the journal Pediatrics showed in particular that premature babies who benefited from “skin-to-skin” therapy were twice as likely to reach their 20s.and birthday than those who only received standard care. As adults, they tended to be less aggressive, impulsive, hyperactive, or stressed than their peers. They also had a larger brain volume than the others, a sign of good development.
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