Healthy Ageing Watch has been set up in 2009 as a ‘Think Tank’ with the aim of promoting the cause of healthy ageing in our rapidly ageing society.

In the industrialised world, demographic ageing is a fact. The ‘Over-80s’ are now the most rapidly growing segment of the population in many countries – a trend that is widely regarded as a potential threat to their national economy and a serious problem for health care funding and resources.  But problems are there to be solved, and healthy ageing can make an important contribution to the task of finding and implementing solutions.

Healthy ageing is an opportunity that needs to rise in priority among the health care partners: doctors and specialists, patients and their carers, health care managers and administrators, nurses, pharmacists, private sector health insurers, and – critically important – government and the public sector as policy maker and payer.

Healthy Ageing Watch believes that it should focus on specific areas of elderly health where problem solving can and should be practised before the ‘problem’ turns into a ‘crisis’ of national or international dimensions.

Our initial focus will be on the Management of Elderly Depression: why and how this widely recognised phenomenon differs from depression among younger persons; why it has become a growing ‘problem area’ in spite of  notable progress in contemporary health care; and  why we should press for known experimental advances to be developed as practical solutions.

Our key goal will be the promotion of integrative care of the depressed elderly