Plaisance-du-Touch (France) (AFP)

"Without using your arms, try to get up from your chair five times in a row."

In a pretty pavilion near Toulouse, Armande, 83, undergoes a physical and mental assessment test, provided by a letter carrier from La Poste.

The white-haired octogenarian is one of the first beneficiaries of a dependency prevention program for seniors, developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and coordinated by the Gérontopôle de Toulouse.

The recent establishment of Icope in Occitanie "is a first in France", told AFP Neda Tavassoli, pharmacist and member of the geriatric department of Toulouse University Hospital.

"It is offered to autonomous people over 60, sometimes disconnected from the medical circuit, and is based on the assessment and regular monitoring of nutrition, cognition, mobility, vision, hearing and psychological state , to intervene as soon as there is the slightest decline and improve or maintain autonomy, ”she explains.

At the wheel of her little yellow van, letter carrier Cécile Saïdani has been traveling for several days in several communes of Haute-Garonne to meet seniors who have previously agreed to participate in the program.

“Flag, flower, door: I'm going to ask you to memorize them and repeat them to me a few minutes later,” the 32-year-old mail carrier told Armande Saint-Pierre.

- "A lot of sense" -

She also whispers the words "coffee, cable, chair" to him to check his hearing, but the octogenarian says she hears nothing.

"On a scale of 0 to 100 of happiness, where do you stand?" Asks Ms. Saïdani, who enters the data collected on a tablet as and when.

"I must be at 20, barely ...", murmurs his interlocutor sadly.

"I can't wait for this (health) crisis to end, because in my head it's not going any more," she confides.

About 15 minutes later, it was her husband Roger, 85, to take the test.

Glasses with eyes and white mask on his mouth, he also admits half-heartedly that "days of bad weather or high wind, things are less well".

"What depresses me is realizing that I am no longer able to do certain things," he repeats.

"I understand," replied the letter carrier gently, specially trained by a Gérontopôle team to carry out these tests.

For the young woman, "this project makes a lot of sense. I really like the contact with users, it's more interactive than a letterbox".

The diversification of the services offered by La Poste "is all the more for us, factors", she enthuses.

- "Confidence capital" -

The octogenarian couple are satisfied with their visit.

"If it had been a doctor maybe he would have used scholarly terms, while with the letter carrier I was reassured, he's someone who has my vocabulary," notes Armande.

"The power of the postman is that it is six days a week at all points of the territory. It is a vector of social bond in the minds of the French", proudly emphasizes Sylvie Bailly, director of establishment at La Poste. of Plaisance-du-Touch.

In the past, the postman mainly delivered letters, but with the decline of mail, "the profession is changing and we offer a whole new range of services, such as bringing meals, shopping or medication to the elderly," she said.

"The Icope project therefore fully corresponds to our priorities: health and senior citizens" and its implementation was made possible thanks to the "confidence factor that we represent", assures Ms. Bailly.

The information collected by the postmen is transmitted directly to the Gérontopôle team in Toulouse, specifies the postal manager.

"If an anomaly is detected, a nurse contacts the person's attending physician, who then takes over," explains Ms. Tavassoli from the La Grave hospital in Toulouse.

A first experimental phase at the end of 2020 in three towns in the Toulouse metropolitan area had made it possible to carry out the test on 500 people, for whom a report to the attending physician was necessary in 20% of cases.

"Within five years, we want to be able to follow 200,000 seniors in Occitania", and the objective of the WHO is to extend the device to the rest of France and beyond, hopes Ms Tavassoli.

© 2021 AFP