The 92-year-old woman was abandoned Thursday at the gates of the Civil Affairs Office in Jeddah’s Safa neighborhood.

New details emerged on a 92-year-old woman who was abandoned by unidentified people in the vicinity of the Civil Affairs Office in Jeddah more than a week ago.

An Okaz/Saudi Gazette investigation revealed that the woman lived by herself in a ramshackle house in the Kilo 3 area of Al-Thagher district.

All attempts to contact her relatives proved fruitless.

Okaz/Saudi Gazette published the woman’s story last week. She was abandoned at the gates of the Civil Affairs Office in Al-Safa district. She was found with a bag of clothes, her identity documents, ATM card, electricity bills and the card of a private hospital.

Officers from the North Jeddah police station, which handled her case, subsequently managed to locate her residence through utility bills in her possession, but they too were unable to locate her relatives.

Once police figured out where she lived, they took the old woman to her house and her neighbors identified her. The neighbors said the woman had been living all alone and they never met any of her relatives.

Authorities asked her neighbors to visit the old woman and check on her safety and health periodically.

Okaz/Saudi Gazette visited the old woman’s house to get more details. She said she lived alone and survived on money she had collected while working several years in a school. She relied on her neighbors to help her with her day-to-day needs.

The woman said she recently started showing symptoms of disease and a man and his wife offered to help her seek treatment.

She went with them to the bank to withdraw money for her treatment, but a female employee in the bank told her to renew her identity card at the Civil Affairs Office.

The man and his wife accompanied her to the Civil Affairs Office in Al-Safa district but left her at the office and disappeared. Several citizens found her and handed her over to the authorities.

A psychiatrist at Al-Amal Hospital, Dr. Ali Salamah, said the woman seems to be suffering from dementia.

“The woman must be provided with basic care and speedy tests should be conducted to confirm that she is stable physically. The authorities concerned and the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) must intervene if there are no relatives to help her.”

 
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