Author: Dr. Prabha Adhikari India has nearly 120 million elderly people with various physical, psychosocial, economic, and spiritual problems. While the functionally and cognitively fit can access usual health-care facilities provided by the government, these people need active aging program to keep them independent. Health ministry has created geriatric centers and geriatric clinics in most of the states; however, these centers may not serve the functionally and cognitively impaired elderly.

There is great need for mobile units, day-care centers and hospices, and need for training of personnel in home nursing. Routine care clinics cannot handle the burden of geriatric population to address their multimorbidity and several other age-related problems. There is a need for a rapid training of health-care professionals of various disciplines in geriatric care. Government must support…