We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
ALTHOUGH WE ARE all be expected to live longer, researchers have warned that our quality of life will diminish in our twilight years unless action is taken now.
In a major new series of papers published today by The Lancet, researchers from the World Health Organisation have predicted that health systems across the world need to adjust to the massive boom in the ageing population in future, or else face the prospect of spiraling levels of chronic illness impacting on quality of life.
Dr John Beard, a co-leader of this new research and an expert in ageing at the World Health Organization, said that this reform must be “deep and fundamental”.
“But we must be careful that these reforms do not reinforce the inequities that drive much of the poor health and functional limitation we see in older age,” Beard added.
There’s already signs that even though we’re living longer, we’re not healthier. Almost a quarter of the ‘overall global burden of illness and death’ are in those aged over 60, due to long-term illnesses that are more likely to become an issue in old age.
One paper published today has suggested that rather than shifting the responsibility to reform of health services, more societal rethinking is needed.
This includes an emphasis on healthy lifestyles to aim for prevention rather than treatment of illness to making better use of technology to help treat more people.
There has also been a suggestion that allowing people to continue to work past retirement age, or by removing tax disincentives, will improve their general well-being.
Within five years, the number of people over 60 and older will outnumber children under 5, according to one paper published today.
By 2050, the world will see the number of people aged 60 and over grow by more than 300% to two billion.
With this comes an increase in the number of people with serious illness and conditions – the number of people with dementia is predicted to grow from 44 million to 135 million by 2050 – leading to increased strain on health systems and the economy.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
We’re right to be concerned at population growth and the effect on climate etc but it’s worth commenting that we’ve probably reached ‘peak child’ and increases in population over the next decades will be due to increased survival with an increasingly ageing population. This is going to put huge demands on society’s and we need to start planning now.
Feck the climate who’s going to be paying the pensions and healthcare of OAP’s. The pension age will have to pushed to out and even at that the healthcare bills will cripple the working age population
Why is the solution always to treat elderly illness?
If I get old and sick and then I’m gonna think hard about letting myself get sick and die instead of get sick and stay alive. We’re not supposed to live for ever.
That and also spending 200,000 on the final few months of my life, which would be money taken from someone else seems like bad value.
I’m sure it takes a lot of courage to terminate your life like that. There are tribes protected by survival international that terminate their lives at 30. It’s part of their culture; they do it without hardly questioning it. Though they’re one of the few remaining human tribes that have’nt destroyed their natural habitat, they now have fat westerners apalled by how they behave. I know it’s not simple, but i say we’ll need to flex our christian ideals a bit in the face of climate change and our demographic issues.
Are they the Logan tribe?
have your say