International Day of Older Persons
1 October 2024, Cairo, Egypt – This year’s International Day of Older Persons, celebrated annually on 1 October, adopts the theme Ageing with Dignity: The Importance of Strengthening Care and Support Systems for Older Persons Worldwide.
People are living longer, and while the trajectory of each person’s life is different, older people are more likely to experience complex, chronic conditions, the management of which requires close coordination across different levels of health and social care, than younger people.
While we are, on average, living longer, we are not necessarily living healthier. Good quality, affordable and equitable care that helps us make the most of our longer lives – no matter who we are, where we live or how old – is urgently needed.
Care and support systems that meet the needs of older people needs to be enhanced. A recent WHO study found that people aged 60 years and above experience unmet health care needs regardless of whether they live in low-, middle- or high-income countries.
Older people may also need preventative and promotive care that maintains good health. Such care can include access to the information, skills and tools we need to care for ourselves.
According to the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing progress report (2023), only 1 in 4 reporting countries have the resources to implement integrated care that is responsive to older people’s needs, only 1 in 3 can implement long-term care, just 16% of low-income countries, which rely heavily on informal care, have training programmes for informal caregivers, and less than