Managing access to essential health services to older people during the COVID-19 pandemic
Wednesday, 21 October 2020, 13:00 hrs(1ST)
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic and non-pharmacological public health measures for its prevention have posed hitherto unknown challenges for the health system. With rare exceptions, most countries in the world and the region have been afflicted with the pandemic and have adopted restrictive public health measures in absence of a curative drug or vaccine. During this period, maintaining essential services has been challenging for the health systems. This virtual collapse of essential health services including health promotion, preventive, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitative and palliative services are likely to have serious adverse health effects, especially on the most vulnerable populations, such as children, people living with chronic conditions or disabilities, and older people. The disruptions in essential services are widespread across the globe. Almost every country (90%) experienced a disruption to some extent, with greater disruptions being reported in low- and middle-income than in high-income countries.
Older people are much more likely to have non-communicable diseases like cancer, double the rate of disability, and experience poorer mental health. This leads to a higher dependency on and higher usage of primary healthcare. Measures like social distancing, self-isolation, and travel restrictions disproportionately disrupted the livelihoods of the older population and their access to routine but life-preserving healthcare.
The tenth webinar in “Promoting health throughout the life-course during the COVID-19 pandemic” series, “Managing access to essential health services to older people during COVID-19 pandemic” was conducted at 13:00 hrs (IST) on Wednesday, 21 October 2020 to discuss issues related to management of COVID-19 in the older population from a health system point of view.Objective
The objective of this webinar was to share WHO guidance on the management of COVID-19 in older people, challenges in the management, and innovations in improving access to health care and prevention of the decline in the intrinsic capacity of older population.
Summary
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