New WHO World Report on Ageing and Health: creating a new vision for healthy ageing
On the International Day of Older Persons, WHO released the first World Report on Ageing and Health. For the first time in history, most people can expect to live into their sixties and beyond. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that older people today are experiencing better health than previous generations at the same age. A transformation in health and long-term care systems will be required.
By age 60, adults face major burdens of disability and death arising from losses in hearing, seeing and getting about, in addition to noncommunicable diseases such as heart disease, stroke, chronic respiratory disorders, cancer and dementia. Older people are also at much greater risk than younger people of experiencing more than one chronic condition at the same time.
The report outlines a new concept of “healthy ageing” that shifts our thinking about health in older persons from solely the presence or absence of disease to a focus on an older person’s well-being, as well as their ability to function well and meaningfully within the context that they live in. The Report also presents evidence and a set of recommendations calling for radical changes not just to health and social care systems, but also to the way society perceives older people and supports them, if we are to collectively benefit from these extra years of life. Today’s focus on treating individual diseases must give way to services that ensure coordinated and integrated care and support that enable people to maintain the highest level of physical and mental capacity for as long as possible. Development of comprehensive systems of long-term care will be required.
Actions across sectors will also be required involving decision-makers from housing, transport, employment and finance ministries to work collaboratively with health experts to build age-friendly environments that enable older people to continue to contribute to their communities and to society as a whole for as long as possible.
Innovation is at the heart of further transforming our systems and societies to respond. Universal health coverage (UHC) provides an excellent opportunity to develop health and social delivery systems to support older persons. Capitalizing on the many lessons from Japan, the global WHO Kobe Centre’s new ten year research strategy on UHC and innovation for ageing populations is documenting social, system and technological innovations that are fit for purpose and respond to the needs of older persons and to design coordinated and integrated health and social care systems.
Various successful models can be adapted, expanded and introduced in other countries. Many of these will be highlighted at the WHO Global Forum on Innovation for Ageing Populations, in Kobe on 7-9 October.