As we near the close of 2025, it is also the half way mark of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030); but some days to me it seems like a stretched out decade. For at this point I reflect on my attendance at the 2018 International Federation on Ageing (IFA) conference in Toronto when the title was – Towards a Decade of Healthy Ageing, From Evidence to Action. From that, the subsequent narrative of the actual UN Decade encompasses similar action areas.
The UN Decade places older people at the centre with a focus on four areas: changing how we think, feel, and act towards ageing, cultivating age-friendly environments, creating integrated and responsive health care systems and services, and ensuring access to long-term care for those people who need it. However, reading the phrase healthy ageing alone, more broadly, if we hope that everyone should have good health, it is really about all generations on their ageing journey.
Participating in events and conversations around this Decade of Healthy Ageing, as I have for some time now with professionals in a range of practice areas of health and the interconnected social issues within the field of ageing and longevity, it has been enlightening while at the same time alarming. There is so much breadth to this subject across diverse regions in the world, where multiple poor health environments and/or inequities in health systems exist.
It is this global perspective that should serve us well as we navigate through this globally while we consider healthy ageing in the local or regional context where we each live; in my case it’s Ontario, Canada. Though we may not see it, we are part of The Americas which also includes countries from the Caribbean, South America and North America. It was about a year or so ago that this registered while on a virtual session with Pan American Health Organization(PAHO).
The PAHO is the Regional Office for the Americas of the World Health Organization (WHO), the specialized health agency of the United Nations. On the PAHO web page for the UN Decade, the initiative is well presented and content rich. It showcases the narrative as The Decades of the Americas and strongly represents the voices of other countries outside the daily diet of North American dialogue we are typically exposed to here.
Since subscribing to the PAHO newsletter in 2024, I receive updates as to what is happening in the southern regions of The Americas. For example this month from Latin America, I was surprised that given the desperate news about Haiti we hear about, the country did celebrate the International Day of Older Persons on October 1st.
According to the PAHO news item, on that day activities included free screenings for hypertension, diabetes, and vision disorders, ophthalmological consultations and dialogue and advocacy to promote inclusion, rights, and dignity of older persons in health policies. In addition I learned that while comparatively small to Canada, about 8 percent of the Haitian population is over the age of 60 years and this share is expected to triple in the coming decades.
This 2023 statistical report speaks to the reality of older people’s lives in many aspects including living arrangements and roles at home, literacy, poverty and access to clean water and sanitation. Given the overall impact of climate change and food insecurity, it was worth the stop to think for instance about safe water access for older people, something we sometimes take for granted where I reside in a built up urban area in Ontario. Here’s a brief extract:
“Access to safe drinking water measured at the national level reveals asymmetries between urban and rural areas. In cities, almost all older people have access to drinking water in their homes, but the percentage in rural areas is much lower, particularly in Colombia where nearly half of older people do not have drinking water in the home… Furthermore, these are the people most likely to use non-potable water, which may directly expose them to a higher risk of health problems.”
In the report Conclusions, a line is drawn to the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing and the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, stating “the future demographic situation of Latin America and the Caribbean offers opportunities, but also challenges related to fighting inequality… Latin America has unique characteristics and since this action plan is global it does not always directly mention the areas where demographic transformations will have the greatest impact.”
So again, at this half way mark of the UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030) it is important to share these global reflections and make way for introducing the initiative in daily conversations, for I must say, outside my professional network of people close to the subject areas mentioned above, whenever I mention the UNDecade initiative to friends, neighbours or strangers, it is not on the radar in everyday coffee shop talk. Mind you, barely a day goes by when the subject of one’s health and health care isn’t far behind the coffee talk about the cost of living.
