By Oliver Mupila
WHAT comes to mind when you think of an old person? A person old in appearance who has been around a long time? Or someone who has undergone transmutation someone who is no longer his or her old self, reduced to a shell by declining performance, declining mental power, to fall sick or go crazy?
This caricature of age is probably the worst cross older people are facing in Africa countries. Because we “know” their skills have left them we do not employ them. Because we know to be incapable of decision making and in need of a keeper, we taking insulting and inappropriate decisions for them.
Because we “know” that old people are infirm, we have neglected germinate lysine for many years.
This fact, the portrait of age only an accurate picture of someone afflicted by a specific demanding illness- not a normal old person at all. But so pervasive is the stereotype that many older people are agreeably should not apply to them. So they conclude they must be lucky.
Ignorance about old age shapes public policy too, Africa societies dispense with the skills of their most experienced citizens and then fail to make proper provision for their needs. Instead old people are treated as dependants whose only suitable occupation is ‘making things out of egg boxes’, and who need to be amused and treated like children while living below the poverty line.
One possible reason for the ignorance that surrounds aging may well be the reduced contact of younger people with the old.
In the multi-generation family, children were as familiar with older people as they were with babies.
Today the extended family system is crumbling all over the nations. Families tend to disintegrate house holds are prevalent.
Urbanization is a country –wide phenomenon as younger people tend to leave the rural areas and look for better living opportunities in the cities.
The result is that natural support systems in the community fall apart and aged persons are forced to fend for themselves.
Communities are now also encouraged to take care of aged persons, even if they are not any formal family ties.
Today, mistaken fears about the incapableness of age mean that people who do not want to car for the aged tend to deny they will ever grow old.
They rarely plan realistically for the future and encounter serious problems when that future arrives.
Combating this fear and changing the policies of a society that buries the old prematurely calls for the same remedy: Education.
Most of us alive today can expect to reach old-age provided those in power don’t bring us to an untimely end.
Education about the realities of aging needs to begin young, before our fears and prejudices are formed.
But things are changing. In the next few years, the military of older citizens themselves together with the exertions of some intelligent concerned people who will begin to make a dent in the monolith of ignorance and prejudice.
More and more it is being realized that old people need what old people: Personal autonomy and dignity, a useful role in society and appropriate, affordable heath care.
As an age group they also need some specific extras in just the same way as young adults need help with job-seeking or house purchase.
A practical urgency in this country is still the development and availability of proper geriatric medicine, which is not there right now to save the lives of our beloved Older persons.
Older Persons are especially vulnerable in these days of HIV/AIDS when all the bread winners are done with disease.
Mismedication - being prescribed drugs they don’t need or having their curable complaints ignored, and lack of planning due to some government ministries overlooking needs of the elderly is a continual problem.
Other needs are more general: A decent income and the right to continued employment in occupations where accumulated skills are valued, recognized and used for serious purposes.
Though these may prove to be unpopular priorities at a time of general economic ups and downs, budget overruns and youth unemployment.
In the growing number and military of the 60s. few leaders can be unaware of the demographics of the future, and there are a handful of politicians who do not hear the tramp of senior feet behind them.
It must be noted that the form of future health care in Zambia will soon be shaped by the senior vote. It would be gratifying to think that the same elder constituency might also turn the balance against other increasing expenditure in the quest for greater consideration of their demands.
But one would hope for that time when a senior lobby is unnecessary and we should resist any tendency to create a senior faction.
Justice for the old is justice for people and we should all be interested in it.
Not only because we will all become old, but because education about age is also education about human rights and human needs.
Accurate knowledge and caring concern about the old, like concern about any group, is the litmus test of a decent social order “towards adding life to our society and all Older Persons”
Don’t forget 1st October is the United Nations International Day of Older Persons.