Dr Nilesh Buddha, Officer-in-Charge, WHO South-East Asia
In the WHO South-East Asia Region, the proportion of people aged 60 years and above is projected to nearly double between 2024 and 2050, from 11.3% to 20.9%. However, many older people spend part of their later years living with ill health, disability or care needs. At age 60, the regional health span gap – the number of years someone lives with chronic disease or poor health – is 4.6 years.
This year’s International Day of Older Persons carries the theme “The Age of Longevity: Rethinking Systems for Longer Lives,” a call to treat healthy ageing as more than a health-sector issue. Rethinking systems means mobilizing the sectors that shape how people age – health, social protection, housing, local government, and more – to ensure that longer lives are also lived well.
The Region is making progress, with Member States increasingly translating the healthy ageing agenda into national and local action. Thailand, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, India and Timor-Leste have enacted policies and programmes for integrated care, long-term care, age-friendly approaches, and stronger institutional mechanisms. These experiences reflect growing regional momentum and provide valuable lessons for advancing healthy ageing across the Region.
Global commitments underpin this work. The UN Decade of Healthy Ageing 2021–2030, a global collaboration led by WHO, aims to improve the lives of older people, their families, and their communities. WHO has supported this agenda through the development and implementation of the Integrated Care for Older People approach to strengthen person-centred, integrated health and social care; the Global report on ageism and the Global Campaign to Combat Ageism; and global guidance on long-term care. WHO has also established an ageing data portal and a monitoring framework with 35 core indicators to track progress on healthy ageing and the implementation of the Decade. The WHO Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities supports local action to create more inclusive environments for older people. Further, WHO’s Fourteenth General Programme of Work 2025–2028 commits to promoting integrated health and social care for older persons, and tracks the share of older people receiving long-term care as one of its indicators.
Regional instruments carry this forward. The WHO South-East Asia Regional Strategy on Healthy Ageing 2024–2030 provides Member States a framework for country-level action across four priorities: combatting ageism, fostering age-friendly environments, delivering integrated care, and ensuring access to long-term care. The Colombo Declaration on Healthy Ageing through Strengthened Primary Health Care, adopted by the South-East Asia Regional Committee in 2025, recognizes that universal health coverage cannot be achieved without addressing the health and care needs of older people. It commits to strengthening multisectoral action and collaboration across the life course while advancing integrated, equitable, and age-responsive care within primary health care. The WHO South-East Asia Regional Office has also established a Regional Technical Advisory Group on Healthy Ageing and has recently convened a regional consultation on strengthening long-term care and supporting countries to translate these commitments into action.
Nonetheless, gaps remain. Financing for healthy ageing and long-term care is often insufficient or fragmented. Shortages of trained health and care workers constrain service delivery, and family and professional caregivers lack adequate support, training and social protection. Access to assistive products and digital technologies remains uneven, while age-disaggregated data is insufficient for planning and monitoring. Older people are not consistently engaged in policymaking and decision-making, and digital exclusion can limit access to health and social services. Ageism is not systematically addressed through legislation, policies, and programmes.
Closing these gaps calls for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach. Communities, civil society, academia, the private sector, and older people themselves all have an essential role to play, and health systems must work alongside social protection, education, local government, finance, and other public sectors. Meaningful engagement of older people in policy-making and decision-making, stronger action to combat ageism, and greater digital inclusion will be essential to ensure that older people can participate, access services, and have their voices heard. Sustained investment, stronger data and accountability, innovation, and knowledge sharing will be critical. WHO will continue to work closely with Member States and a broad range of partners to provide evidence-based guidance and normative support, and support the adaptation, implementation, and scaling of effective approaches.
The traditions of South-East Asia do not see older people as a burden, but as sources of experience, wisdom, and resilience. Rethinking systems to enable healthier, more independent, and productive lives benefits everyone, as older people continue to enrich our families, communities, economies, and societies.
On this International Day of Older Persons, together let us turn this commitment into action, to ensure that we add not only years to life, but also life to years.