John Hume: Former SDLP leader has 'severe difficulties' in dementia struggle, wife says

Image source, Pacemaker

Image caption, John Hume has difficulties remembering day-to-day occurrences, his wife Pat said

22 November 2015

Former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume is having "severe difficulties" in his struggle with dementia, his wife has said.

Pat Hume said the 78-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has problems remembering day-to-day occurrences.

She was speaking to Irish state broadcaster RTÉ about her life with the Londonderry politician.

Mrs Hume said her husband's dementia "hasn't actually taken away all his quality of life".

"Derry is a very dementia-friendly city," she said. "People love John."

Consequence

Mr Hume came to prominence through the civil rights movement in the late 1960s and helped to found the SDLP, becoming its leader in 1979.

He was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his reconciliation work with then Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble in 1998.

Image caption, Mrs Hume said the love of people in Derry had helped to maintain a quality of life for her husband

He first became ill in the late 1990s when he was speaking at a conference in Austria, his wife told RTÉ Radio 1's Sunday with Miriam programme.

It is believed he suffered some brain damage as a consequence of the illness, she said, and that has gradually worsened in the intervening years.

She said he was "having severe memory difficulties at the moment".

Tough

"If John was speaking to you now and I said to him in half-an-hour: 'It was lovely to see Miriam', he would say: 'Where did we see Miriam?'

"He just wouldn't know that he'd seen you... so it really is very sad."

She has written about her marriage in a new book that is set to be launched in Dublin next week, but said her husband would not be attending as he "doesn't like being away from home now".

Mrs Hume added that caring for someone with dementia "can be very tough".