India-Japan Deliberate On Ways To Strengthen Health Care For The Elderly

NEW DELHI || Experts from India and Japan have discussed ways in which the two countries can collaborate to strengthening health care for older people and reimagine ageing and the research, demonstration, and implementation required for the same at a webinar organised to celebrate International Day of Older Persons.

Prof A B Dey, Former Professor, and Head, Department of Geriatric Medicine, Former Dean (Research) Nodal Officer, National Center for Ageing, AIIMS, New Delhi, suggested that expansion of initiatives like the National Program for Health care of the elderly, Aayushman Bharat and implementation of WHO’s long term care protocol (ICOPE) could help in strengthening health care for older people.

The webinar on ‘India - Japan Celebration of the International Day of Older Persons’ was organized by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, jointly with the Embassy of India, Tokyo & and the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Government of Japan to celebrate the International Day of Older Persons recently.

“Ensuring people’s health also ensures National Security”, said Dr Tatsuya Kondo, Chief Executive Officer of Medical Excellence JAPAN (MEJ), Advisor on Health and Medical Strategy for Cabinet Secretariat of Government of Japan. He highlighted the scope of reimagining ageing through education and re-training of the elderly and stressed on the need of strengthening bilateral relations towards achieving universal health care by working together.

Sanjeev K Varshney, Head, International Cooperation, DST, said that dividing the entire work in two aspects, namely ‘Research’ aspect and ‘Demonstration and application’ aspect, should be the way forward for India and Japan to strengthen their bilateral relations for realising Medical Excellence India (ME-India).

Usha Dixit, Counsellor (Science &Technology), Embassy of India, Tokyo, Government of India said that a collaborative model will provide an opportunity to explore new directions in research on population ageing as well as the need to design and develop S&T interventions for providing comprehensive health services to elderly at all levels.

Debapriya Dutta, Head, SEED division, highlighted various initiatives of the Government of India for the health and socio-economic security of elderly people and provided a framework for Indo-Japan collaboration on Geriatric Research and Development, Healthcare, and Assistive technologies for promoting active ageing.

The webinar witnessed the presence of Sanjay Kumar Verma, Ambassador, Embassy of India, Tokyo, Government of India, Takuma Inamura, Director, Healthcare Industries Division, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), Government of Japan, Neena Raina, Senior Advisor, Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health at Health and Ageing (MCA), World Health Organization (WHO) and many others.