Challenge of aging.

Abstract

Our idea ofwhat constitutes effectiveness and efficiency in the health and social services depends on whether we are customers or purveyors. In an obsession with cost accounting and the ethically questionable issue of how many quality adjusted life years (QALYs) can be bought for each taxpayer's pound,' the government has been offering an exclusively purveyor's agenda for assessing health and community care. It is therefore refreshing to find that The Health of the Nation2 is mostly concerned with customer interests-health rather than health expenditure and health outcomes rather than service processes.Curiously, however, given the realities of health care in our aging population, older people are conspicuously absent from most of its pages. Premature death is taken to be death before the age of 65, a definition recalling times when individuals were valued only as exploitable labour. This now seems anachronistic, if only because expectation of life at birth is 73 years for men and 78 for women.2 It may also be less than astute politically given that people aged over 65 comprise a fifth of the electorate and sooner or later will start voting with their heads.

Is elder abuse on the curriculum? The relative contribution of child abuse, domestic violence and elder abuse in social work, nursing and medicine qualifying curricula

“…In the UK, the government's response to the challenge of an ageing population has been described as inadequate by a leading clinician (Grimley Evans 1991). It is clear that medical undergraduate and postgraduate doctors are not receiving education on an issue that affects the lives of elderly people.…”

"Aderência à atividade física em mulheres da Universidade Aberta á Terceira Idade"

“…Nos Estados Unidos, segundo o Centro Nacional de Estatística de Saúde dos EUA, em 1900, somente 40% dos cidadãos americanos sobreviviam até os 65 anos, porém por volta de 1990, 80% deles atingia essa idade e 50% vivia até 79 anos. Da mesma forma, na Inglaterra e no País de Gales, o número de pessoas entre 75 e 84 anos aumentou em 16% entre 1981 e 1989 e o número de indivíduos acima de 85 anos aumentou em 39% durante o mesmo período (EVANS, 1991).…”