The United Nations have endorsed the Healthy Ageing Decade for the period 2021-2030. This campaign potentially involves all the countries of the world in promoting initiatives aimed at improving the lives of the older people, aware of the great importance, numerical as well as social, that they are assuming as the number of advanced age people progressively increases.
This situation is completely new at world level because there have never been so many people living over the age of 65: 700 million today and 1.5 billion in 2050. An annual report is compiled by the United Nations as part of the decade dedicated to healthy ageing. This year's report, available online, includes a series of case studies describing experiences around the world considered to represent an effective approach to healthy ageing.
The 'Long Live the Elderly!' programme, which this year celebrates 20 years since it started in 2004 in Rome, was also included among them. Today "Viva gli Anziani!" is spread over 11 Italian cities and it operates in Antwerp, Belgium. It is a proposal for healthy ageing based on preventing the consequences of the frailty so often characterising the lives of the elderly and on involving everyone, elderly and not, in a network of relations effective in counteracting social isolation, which is associated with increased mortality. READ THE 2023 REPORT ON THE UN AGEING DECADE WEBSITE.
