The sad story of Maria Fernanda Silva, aged 73, is being told today as statistics portal Pordata points to over 43,000 elderly people living ‘on their own’, or otherwise at risk in this country.
Maria Fernanda died in bed at home in an apartment building in Bairro São Roque de Lameira, in Porto, sometime before Christmas of 2023.
No-one missed her.
Social Security went on sending pension cheques to her that were never cashed; the council tried ‘evicting her’ for unpaid rent on a number of occasions – but never received any response when they knocked at the door…
Post accumulated in the post box downstairs. Flyers were systematically stuffed into her door jam.
Neighbours, apparently thinking Maria Fernanda had gone into an old people’s home, ‘got on with their lives’.
Eventually, a doctor at the local health centre ‘raised the alarm’ because she realised that Maria Fernanda was diabetic, yet she had not been seen by anyone at the health centre for over two years…
PSP police, accompanied by local firefighters, were the first authorities to ‘take the initiative’ and break down the door into the apartment.
They found Maria Fernanda’s skeleton lying where she had died, in bed, over two years previously.
PJ police were “actioned and took trace evidence. The bones were transported to the office of legal medicine”, writes Correio da Manhã.
A source from the local council admits that “something failed in the accompaniment of Maria Fernanda”. But her lonely death has served one purpose: the council is now developing a project aimed at ‘accompanying elderly people at risk of isolation’.
Source material: Correio da Manhã which will be featuring, ‘Solidão Mortal’ (Deadly loneliness) in its ‘Investigação’ evening slot tonight.
