President Calls for Measures to Protect Elderly and Victims of Violence

President Calls for Measures to Protect Elderly and Victims of Violence

Bratislava, April 3 (TASR) – During her meeting with the permanent crisis management team on Friday, President Zuzana Caputova appealed to its members to increase the protection of elderly people, victims of domestic violence and other vulnerable groups, the president’s spokesman Martin Strizinec told TASR on the same day.

According to Strizinec, the president was also interested in stocks of protective aids for Slovak hospitals and people in the frontline, the number of testing kits and lung ventilators, as well as other measures already introduced or planned.

Caputova stressed the need to make headway in protecting elderly people. “This chiefly concerns testing every new social service recipient who enters a social-care facility or returns to one from hospital,” she said. Protective aids should also be provided to people who care for the elderly. In addition, the president pointed to victims of domestic violence, “whose number is growing everywhere in the world during quarantine”. People who need to be placed in asylum centres should be tested as well, she added.

The president spoke to team members about the need for better cooperation and communication between the authorities that are addressing the crisis and local government, along with the need to provide transparent information on all adopted measures.

The head of the state praised the work of all the team experts. According to her, they are helping to ensure that the measures used to fight the spread of coronavirus are grounded in facts and professional considerations. “I positively perceive several cases of progress, be they in terms of providing various forms of testing, in supplying hospitals with protective aids, or in a special approach towards various communities,” she added.