Background:

• The care of elderly people is managed by a set of professionals or voluntary organisations interested in geriatric services. 
• These homes are run by NGOs, religious or voluntary organisations with support from the government, or by local philanthropists. 
• The quality of service varies as these homes lack regulatory oversight. 
• Many homes lack clearly established standard operating procedures, and their referral paths to health care are informal.

A rapidly growing section:

• A formal approach to homes for the elderly is an important policy and planning issue for India. 
• The UN World Population Ageing Report notes that India’s ageing population (those aged 60 and above) is projected to increase to nearly 20% by 2050 from about 8% now.
• It is essential that our policy framework and social responses are geared to meet this reality.
• A recent set of research papers from Hyderabad focusing on the quality of health in homes for the elderly has some interesting insights.
• About 30% of the residents who were part of the study (over 1,500 participants from 40 homes) had a vision impairment of some sort, but nearly 90% of this vision impairment could be addressed by simple, relatively low-cost health interventions: issuing better eye glasses or cataract surgery.
• The study also found some ‘unseen’ effects of vision impairment: many were prone to depression. 
• In fact, those with both vision and hearing impairment had a rate of depression that was five times higher than those without.

Public policy support:

• Building formal pathways for basic health screening such as screenings for blood sugar, blood pressure, periodic vision and hearing screening, and a simple questionnaire to assess mental health. 
• Such interventions are inexpensive (think of all the motorcycle-operated screenings outside public grounds for morning-walkers) and could go a long way in identifying health issues and offering support.
• Homes for the elderly must be guided, again by policy, to make their facilities and buildings elderly and disabled-friendly. 
• Design, architecture and civic facilities must be thought from the ground up and these innovations must be available for all residents, not just those living in expensive ones.

Conclusion:

Three major themes  “sense of well-being,” “having good physical health,” and “preserving good mental health” must be the goal of the government in promoting the elderly care to achieve SDG goals