What in news?
- The National Health Policy (NHP), 2017 is not sensitive to the needs of the elderly.
- It overlooks the rapid rise in the percentage of the old people in the population and associated health issues.
How does the health of the elderly fare in India?
- “India Human Development Survey” finds that the proportions of those suffering from ‘Non-Communicable Diseases’ - NCDs nearly doubled during 2005-12 among the elderly.
- It accounted for about a third of the above 60 populations in 2012.
- More females than males suffered from these diseases and the percentage increases with age.
- Numerous physiological changes also occur and the risk of chronic diseases rises.
What are the systemic issues?
- Systemic issues - The health system is ill-equipped to deal with surging NCDs.
- Our medical personals are also not well trained to treat/advise the aged suffering from dementia or frailty.
- There aren’t enough facilities for early diagnosis and management of conditions such as hypertension.
- Costs - Hospitalisation costs are exorbitant and the challenge is compounded by the fact that earning potential of the elderly is less.
- While private insurance is prohibitive due to costs, access to government health insurance nearly doubled in recent years.
- But its coverage too remained low due age related barriers.
How can these issues be dealt with?
- Loneliness - It manifests in the distressing feeling due to divergences between one’s desired and actual social relationships.
- Research shows that loneliness increases vascular resistance and diminishes immunity.
- Alcoholism - Whether related to or unrelated to loneliness - a high risk factor for NCDs is daily consumption of alcohol.
- Daily consumption of alcohol among the aged with NCDs rose more than twice over the period 2005.
- Networking - Children play an important role in elderly support.
- Women are increasingly taking up jobs that provide them with greater security in older age.
- But this limits the capacity of women & families to provide care for the older people in their families due to work related pressures.
What is the way forward?
- Many of these chronic conditions such as hypertension can be prevented or delayed by engaging in healthy behaviours.
- The World Report on Ageing and Health 2015 (WHO) speaks about the concept of graceful aging within communities.
- This reinforces the case that solutions to the crisis of aging also outside health systems.
- From a policy perspective, health systems have to be configured to deal with not one NCD but multiple NCDs to manage them better.
- Above all, family ties and social networks need to be strengthened.
Source: The Hindu
