Lebanon's elderly and more...

Source: Criane looked this up online in Lebanon.

Lebanon's elderly population is estimated to exceed 10% by 2025 (Sibai,

et al., 2004).

Many elderly are now living alone because of greater emigration among young

people, decreased mortality rates, major breakthroughs in healthcare and social

change among the young. It is expected that a greater demand for elderly nursing

homes and subsidized care will be needed in the face of elderly demographic changes.

Worldwide interest in successful ageing is now concerned with how to maintain

people in homes or the community (Jones and Peters, 1992). The demand for

adequate healthcare in either private, charity, non-profit and publicly funded homes,

plays a major role in providing elderly care in Lebanon. Such needs include economic

maintenance, psychosocial and health related aspects. Thus, our study assesses the

institution status by incorporating structures, processes and skills before relating them

to wellbeing. Our purpose was to improve elderly quality of life including autonomy,

cognitive, nutritional and psychological states.

Elderly healthcare services have been a powerful ingredient for national

healthcare policy decision makers. The basic assumption for any future policy

underscores elderly peoples’ quality of life and the progress from dependency to

independency and wellbeing. We consider two main perspectives; first, medical

intervention for the purpose of elderly longevity and second, bio-psychological, which

takes account of biological, psychological and social wellbeing. This latter

perspective reflects generally the policy “faithfully” outlined by the World Health

Organization (WHO, 1993) and considers promoting a healthy living and lifestyle

changes in elderly care nursing homes (ENH) by nutritional, physical and

psychological support programmes (O'Boyle, 1997). There are however, considerable

debates about what succeeds and what policy makers will decide for the betterment of

elderly lives.