It can be confidently stated that global population aging is both the greatest success of global public health efforts of the past, as well as the greatest challenge for the further global public health efforts of the future.
Over the past decades, life expectancy at birth has increased globally, reaching a world-wide average of about 71.5 in 2017 (7 years longer than in 1990) and around 80 in the developed countries (compared to about 50 years in the developed countries in the early 20th century). This achievement occurred primarily due to advances in basic public health such as sanitation, clean water, waste disposal, temperature controlled living and working environments, and advances in medical technology -- all of which yielded large and rapid declines in communicable diseases. Beginning with the last quarter of the 20th century, progress made against chronic fatal diseases (especially heart disease) from new diagnostic tools, treatments, and improved behavioral risk factors (such as reductions in smoking), generated further increases in life expectancy, although at a slower pace. Currently, while the highest life expectancies are still found in the “developed” countries, the opportunity for rising longevity remains likely for “developing” world in the coming decades. Considering that both rising longevity and population aging are likely demographic events in the coming decades, by 2050 the proportion of people over 60 years is expected to double from about 13% to nearly 25%, which, in absolute terms, means an increase from 962 million to 2.1 billion people [1]. Rising longevity during the last 150 years is a testament to human ingenuity, and there is reason to believe further advances are possible./.../
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Dear friends,
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Aging is excluded from WHO work program. Please react!
Dear friends,
I wanted to bring to your attention an important and urgent issue for aging care and research.
It turns out that in the forthcoming work program of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the years 2019-2023 – the issue of aging and aging-related ill health is excluded completely! This means that, within the next 5-6 years (2018 given to the program deliberations), according to this document, the World Health Organization is not obliged to do anything to care for the health of older persons or to improve their health, not to mention conduct any research and development to create new therapies and technologies for improving the health of the aged, or any kind of longevity research. The issues of aged health are not in the WHO work program! This is the essence of ageism in health care and health research!
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