Intergenerational healthcare inequities in developing countries.

Abstract

Concern about the rapid ageing of all societies reaches alarming proportions as healthcare inequities are steeply rising, prompting the elderly to live longer but subject to insufficient social protection and healthcare in the wake of dwindling public resources. The aged population of developing nations are facing additional hardships due to the growing gap between needs and the financial reductions of public institutions, retirement funds, and the trend towards privatization of essential services turned into commodities. Current approaches to allocation of insufficient resources without ageist discrimination are briefly discussed: individual self-care aimed at successful, active and healthy ageing based on resourcefulness of the privileged elderly; utilitarian approaches founded on QALY and fair innings, and human rights focused on the plights of the elderly. These approaches cannot apply to resources poor nations, who need to engage in context-bound bioethics dealing with the realities of their exposed ageing population. A developing world bioethics is needed to face the plights of the elderly in countries with low and middle-income and insufficient social capital. Suggested are: 1) a phenomenological approach based on the interaction of bioethics and ethnology, furthering grass-roots input from the elderly; 2) Create small communities -campus-like boroughs- to simplify accessibility to social services and healthcare facilities, as an alternative to the high-cost WHO proposal of age-friendly large cities.