Professor Finbarr MARTIN, President-elect of the European Union Geriatric Medicine Society  ,is a clinician and academic working with frail older people in the English National Health Service.

Professor MARTIN drew attention to 3 key areas for action in the WHO report and the work planned for its implementation.

• make the places we live in much more friendly to older people. (Good examples can be found in WHO’s Global Network of Age-friendly Cities and Communities)
• Realigning health systems to the needs of older people  which means a shift from systems that are designed around curing acute disease, to systems for the chronic conditions
• Develop long-term care systems so as to reduce inappropriate use of acute health services and ensure people live their last years with dignity.

This has to be done considering older people frailty which requires a holistic response at every stage of the lifespan

Health of older people is a result of genetics and experience from even before conception to old age.  Although we are now recognizing that evolution has enabled us to develop plenty of reserve capacity, our repair mechanisms are finite. Cells, tissues and physiological systems lose reserve as we age so that in old age, many are at a stage when small additional stresses (falls etc) may produce disproportionate  failure, particularly in functional abilities. . So we need a holistic response, he insists : diagnosis, treatment and enablement. Every stage of the lifespan is important.

Make healthcare systems suitable for older people from any socio economic background

Differences in socioeconomic factors lead to large differences in health and disability by the time people reach old age. Our challenge is to make healthcare systems suitable for modern older people. This involves society, policy, patients, most staff and most medical specialties says Pr MARTIN.

He raises the issue of cases of abuse revealed in the UK press, showing poor quality care for older people in hospitals. and  care homes providing some research findings in the UK which explains some of this and the response in the hospital in which Professor MARTIN is working.

No empathy or compassion, just the right to human rights for people, particularty for older people.

Of course, we provide health care for older people out of sympathy, out of compassion but I believe not in terms of sympathy and compassion but in the rights of people and in this case of older people !

And the Council of Europe is the right body to deal with it !We are the human rights body and therefore thet is our prominent purpose. And we should be looking at the older people situation in those terms.

How more can be done at the Council of Europe ?

The challenge is great. A lot has already been done at the Council of Europe but the important is to know what can be done. According to WHO, 4 millions of elderly people are abused each year. It is not acceptable ! We also read that older people are being exploited by commercial organisations, particularly insurance companies. We know of the growing constraints on health care budget We know of the lack of clinical guidelines whereas older people contributed to build up the wealth of our society

The report we are drafting aims to produce a recommendation of what we are describing as a garantee of rights for oder people in care

There is a principal respponsibility of statutoriy bodies
Both health care and social care bodies must provide the basic needs and probably work more closely together as in Scotland.

A call to NGOS to

• make sure that Council of Europe recommendations are implemented
• raise good practices to be recommended  to other countries
• give information about negligence or other abuse on older people
• put the pressure on governments of the Member States to address the challenge
  
  

"The need for common action has never been greater as it is now !" stresses Lord Foulkes

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Colleagues and Friends,

We are getting older.

You will hear it many times today; you have probably heard it many times before: across the world, human beings are living longer than ever. And here in Europe the demographic shift is particularly pronounced. In 2014 it is estimated that nearly one in five Western Europeans was 65 years old or older. By 2030, this will have risen to one in four.

What does this mean for our continent?

First, let me say that I do not accept the simplistic caricatures which sometimes present aging populations as nothing but burdensome to younger generations.