The charity event featured a musical performance by singer Luz Casal and the support of well-known figures such as actors Joan Pera and Joel Joan and World Padel Tour finalist Lucía Sainz.

At the Night of Alzheimer’s, organised by the Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona

Carles Campuzano and Gemma Tarafa denounce the underfunding of the Dependency Law by the Spanish Government

• The organisation has raised €27,000, which it will allocate to the second phase of the Acehealth platform, with the aim of incorporating virtual reality and artificial intelligence as key tools to advance in the therapeutic field and early detection.
• The charity event featured a musical performance by singer Luz Casal and the support of well-known faces such as actors Joan Pera and Joel Joan, and World Padel Tour finalist Lucía Sainz.

The 7th edition of La Nit de l’Alzheimer, organised by the Ace Alzheimer Center, brought together around 110 people in Barcelona to tackle this dementia. The charity dinner, which took place last night at the Mandarin Oriental in Barcelona, raised €27,000, which will be devoted entirely to the AceHealth telemedicine project.

The event, which aims to be a meeting point between the scientific community and society, was attended by well-known figures such as actress Cristina Brondo and illustrator Pilarín Bayés, as well as institutional representatives. The Secretary of Social Rights of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Carles Campuzano, has insisted that ‘the challenge posed by Alzheimer’s is a collective one and depends on our ability to build alliances’ and has underlined the commitment of the Generalitat Government to help build solid alliances to tackle challenges such as Alzheimer’s. For her part, Gemma Tarafa, Councillor for Health, Ageing and Care at Barcelona City Council, referred to the fact that Barcelona is a caring city, but that ‘often people with Alzheimer’s have to adapt to the city’. Tarafa explained that ‘cities need to adapt and be more welcoming to people who need support’.

Both have agreed to denounce the underfunding suffered by the Dependency Law at the hands of the Spanish Government. Campuzano has pointed out that it is a law poorly geared towards promoting active ageing at home and has asserted that resources must be increased to implement new policies. Tarafa, in this vein, has also stated that it is a ‘slow and insufficient’ law.

The charity dinner aimed to give voice to the testimonies of people living with this dementia, such as the actress Carme Elías, who explained how she received the news of her Alzheimer’s diagnosis and emphasised how important it is to raise awareness of the disease.

Presented by journalists Josep Puigbó and Cristina Riba, the evening featured a headline performance by singer Luz Casal and included actors Joan Pera and Joel Joan and actress Cristina Brondo. Brondo explained, referring to the actors and actresses, ‘we all suffer in silence; there are fears and voices that become harder to deal with as the years go by, but ours is a profession that allows us to put our memory skills into practice.’ Also attending the event was professional padel player and 2021 World Padel Tour Finals finalist, Lucía Sainz.

Attendees were able to enjoy the humour of Jordi LP, charity raffles and the screening of the Regala Memòria 2022 advert: an awareness video that this year has sought to emphasise time, making the viewer aware of the scale of the disease and the race against time it represents, as every 3 seconds there is a new case of dementia in the world, 70% of which are Alzheimer’s.

AceHealth: the project that brings together technology and health

The project that, for the past two years, The Alzheimer’s Night helps to promote AceHealth, a ground-breaking initiative that aims to guarantee care and support for all people with Alzheimer’s and their families and carers from anywhere in the country. This is one of Ace’s strategic objectives, and an area on which the organisation has focused even more effort in the wake of the effects of Covid-19.

In this regard, Dr Mercè Boada, neurologist and medical director of Ace, stated during the event that ‘we are developing a telemedicine service that brings us closer to people who are isolated in terms of mobility or geography, which allows us to reach further and more people, without leaving anyone behind’. An example of this is the development of the Facememory test, which allows anyone to assess their memory from their own home, without needing the help of a professional, but with results reviewed by Ace’s neuropsychology team.

This year, Ace is taking things a step further and will dedicate the funds to the second phase of the project, which involves, on the one hand, incorporating technological innovation into the therapeutic field through the use of tools such as virtual reality and, on the other, work on incorporating spontaneous speech, through artificial intelligence, as a tool to predict cognitive decline as early as possible.

For more information:

Isabel Rodríguez

93 444 73 18

irodriguez@fundacioace.org