Increasing life expectancy has led to higher expectations amongst people not only to live longer, but also to live longer with lower levels of morbidity, fewer years of disability, and with a high quality of life. Medical advances are increasingly making longer healthy life spans possible.
The WHO states that, investing in health throughout life produces dividends for societies everywhere. For this reason healthy ageing is one of Qatar’s National Health Strategy (NHS) 2018-2022 12-priority areas with a national target to achieve a one-year increase in Healthy Life-Years (HLYs) for the over 65 years old population by 2022.
There are many initiatives under healthy ageing priority area, one of them is related to addressing, and monitoring the needs of the cognitivist impaired population. Considered as one of the first in the Middle East, Qatar National Dementia Plan, which has been launched in November 2018, is the main achievement under this initiative. It demonstrates our sincere commitment to ensuring the provision of proper support to the aging population with specific ailments.
The national target for healthy ageing can only be achieved by working together as individuals, caregivers, families, communities and organizations, supported by international expert bodies, to ensure that the implementation efforts are well coordinated, offering our elderly population the opportunity to live the best life possible.
To ensure a good quality of life for older people, Qatar is once again taking the lead in the Middle East to arrange an important educational conference for our healthcare professionals.
Dr Salih Al-Marri
Assistant Minister of Health Affairs at the Ministry of Public Health
