The United Nations General Assembly recently declared the 2021-2030 Decade as the Decade of Healthy Aging.
“This will adopted by the United Nations aims to stimulate action by countries to improve the well-being of older people, both during the COVID-19 pandemic and afterward,” said Dr. Etienne Krug, Director of the Department of Social Determinants of the Health of the World Health Organization.
Our country is one of the oldest in Latin America and the Caribbean: it has 20.8% of its population aged 60 or over , by 2030 it is expected to reach 30%. For some years there have been more elderly people than children in Cuba.
As the years to live increase, the opportunities that life can provide largely depend on healthy aging. This healthy aging is not something static, it is a process that spans a lifetime and reaches all people, healthy or ill, and at any age.
The aging of the population is declared by the Cuban government as a strategic area for the future of the country. In Cuba, the aging of the population already affects all aspects of society, particularly labor markets, the demand for services such as education, housing, health, long-term care, social protection, transportation, information and communication, as well as in family structures and intergenerational ties.
Cuba is better prepared than other countries to face the challenge of aging, although there is still a long way to go. It has a universal, free and equitable health system, with social security that leaves no one helpless. The joint work of the whole of society will make it possible to offer a harmonized, concerted and sustainable response to the challenge of aging.
The areas of action proposed in this Decade are:
Change the way we think, feel and act with regard to age and aging.
Ensure that communities foster the capacities of older people.
Offer integrated and people-centered care and primary health services that respond to the needs of the elderly.
Provide access to care for older people with chronic diseases who need it.
Participating in a decade on this issue will allow Cuba to make the aging phenomenon more visible, identify areas in which the ministries, local governments, civil society, academia and the non-state sector that can intervene to build together, together with the elderly , our response to this demographic process.
The pandemic that has devastated the world and the arrival of the “new normal” will mark the beginning of the Decade of Healthy Aging. For Cuba it is an opportunity to learn and successfully teach this movement. What is good for the elderly is good for everyone.
(With information from the Cited )