It’s an unlikely leader in any world stakes but according to a senior gerontologist, Turkey is making inroads when it comes to celebrating its elderly and ensuring they live out their later years in style.
Kemal Aydin, the country’s head of the International Centre for Ageing and Development said 2019 is the year of the older person.
Aydin said Turkey is a leading country in elderly care due to its approaches such as the “Peaceful Home” project, which gives priority to home care facilities instead of nursing homes.
“We are against nursing homes. The place where a healthy person stays is their own home, the society. Systems and technologies that value them and make them healthy are delivered to the ones in need in Turkey,” he said.
Other plans include establishing a charity to help elderly people in need, with the money raised to be spent on building age-friendly cities.
- There are 1.5 billion elderly people in the world with 125 million of them in Europe alone.
- In 2017 there were 3.8 million over 65s in Australia — might be time to take a leaf out of Turkey’s books.
