People Living Longer in Poor Countries

By Carley Petesh, Associated Press Writer

World

April 11, 2007

Nations with graying populations must do more to help their elderly stay healthy and ensure their social well-being, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

This is not only true in affluent countries such as France, Japan and Germany, which have long had some of the world's oldest populations.

It is also becoming increasingly important, the U.N. health agency said, in developing countries like China, Peru, and Sierra Leone, where life expectancies have grown at a faster rate than those of richer countries.

Some countries "will grow older before they grow richer," Dr. Somnath Chatterji, team leader of WHO's Multi-country Studies Unit, told a five-day conference of the U.N. commission on population and development.

That means countries already struggling to cope with high rates of infectious illness also could have to contend with an increase in health problems common in older people, such as heart disease and stroke.

"Something that took France over a century," Chatterji said, "has happened in a matter of two decades in other countries."

China has one of the fastest-growing older populations in the world. The number of people more than 65 years old is growing at nearly 3 percent a year, compared to a rate of less than 1 percent for the overall population, said Jiang Fan, China's Vice Minister of National Population and Family Planning.

The trend "constitutes another grave challenge and exerts unprecedented pressure on social security," he said. "Social security system of the elderly has not been established in most of China's rural areas, and most of the elderly mainly depend on their families."

Chatterji urged governments to develop comprehensive strategies so that as people age, they stay healthy.

The strategy should include helping older people cope with daily activities such as driving, discouraging smoking and managing chronic illnesses, he said.

"If the health of this population is addressed appropriately and in a timely fashion, this is indeed going to be a boom for the world, and not a bang," he said.