How better to take care of them

Ghana’s national program often focuses on a huge number of newborn people in the country. In fact, the less noticed demographic transformation transforms society: the older population of the country is growing rapidly. According to Ghana Statistical Service estimatesPeople aged 60 and above are expected that by 2050 they require over 12% of the total population, above the doubling of estimates at 2021 of 6.8%.

And more of these older adults age alone.

This is due to the transition of Ghana from extended to nuclear family systems, combined with rural migration and migration and international. Traditionally, older Ghanaians aged in many fundamental households, with the care of children and the extended family. But today migration patterns intensified, and more than 50% of the population live in urban areas, leaving many older people in rural communities or isolated in urban slums.

I recently carried out test In six Ghana communities (city and country). Using 52 interviews, I studied emotional, social and economic implications of aging itself.

The study participants reflected a common topic: erosion of intergenerational family structures, leaving an elderly social and emotionally insulated person.

As a 73-year-old participant of the widow who lives in the city:

My daughter is in Canada. My son lives in Kumasi, but he rarely visits. I live alone, and if I get unwell, I’m just waiting. Sometimes I pray that someone would notice.

Such stories are no longer anecdotal protruding values. Representative data at national level with Ghana Living Standards Survey AND Who Mage Ghana Wave 2 Also reveal an boost in lonely life among older adults, especially widowy women and people without formal pensions. Over 22% of older respondents in the city Ghana reported their lives themselves, which is a pointed contrast with the previous decades, in which interdependence with adult children was the norm. Many older Ghanaans have no reliable carers.

As a doctoral student in population research at the University of Ghana, I focus on the quality of life related to health among older adults. This article draws on mine Doctoral field work In the city and rural Ghana, using qualitative interviews to discover the live reality of aging itself.

The study emphasizes the gapa ghana policy: they skip the lonely elders who live without everyday family support.

The article requires integrated social protection for the elderly living alone. This would include subsidized health care, social assistance services, emergency care networks and social interventions in the field of mental health.

What did aged people have to say

Discussions in focus groups revealed that older adults are struggling with emotional loneliness, financial anxiety and the limitations of the healthcare system. Despite the presence of pension associations, many older adults feel forgotten. Spiritual activities and reading offer moments of relief, but confined national health insurance insurance, growing maintenance costs and decreasing family support deepen difficulties.

Focus groups revealed that older women were particularly vulnerable to widowy, uncertainty of land and decreasing support from children. Men, respected, felt idle and unused. Participants talked about finding strength in agriculture, faith and community, but they felt forgotten in national development planning.

Ghana National aging policy (2010) He promises integrated care, but older adults, especially women, slip into the cracks in urban anonymity.

Aging here is not only biological, physical, psychological and economic. My wider tests He confirms that most older adults in Ghana worked in an informal sector. Therefore, they do not have access to formal pensions or the security of income after retiring.

Participants of my latest research shared how they felt:

I was a dressmaker all my life. Now my eyes fail. Without a pension, no money. I survived Maniok and prayer. -66-year-old retired woman

Aging in Ghana is like entering the forest – you disappear quietly. Nobody sees you. -69-year-old woman

This statement emphasizes the experience of gender aging, in which women often encounter greater economic and emotional susceptibility due to widowing, longer life expectancy and social neglect.

We are not dying yet. We want to matter again. -70-year-old man

We have houses, but not houses anymore. -75-year-old man

What next

The implications of this neglect are stunning. According to World Health OrganizationLoneliness and social insulation among the elderly are associated with a 50% increased risk of dementia, depression and premature death. In Ghana, additional challenges related to inaccessible health facilities and cultural stigma regarding aging. However, most people don’t talk about it.

Ghana introduced the national aging policy in 2010 to promote health, safety and participation of the elderly in domestic development. But many older people still live without inexpensive healthcare, age -friendly infrastructure or regular income.

What Ghana needs now is not another great political document. It needs a practical activity rooted by the community and supported by the state.

Decentralized geriatric community Care: Train volunteers at the health level in the field of geriatric care and equip them with basic tools for supporting the elderly in their homes.

Integration of the pension and informal sector: Extend Ghana’s retirement framework to informal sector employees.

Public awareness campaigns: Attach aging in national media not as a decrease, but as a contribution, emphasizing older wisdom, immunity and continuous social significance.

Urban aging planning: Take into account age -friendly elements such as ramps, benches, toilets and marking for development plans.

None of this is a charity. It is a strategic investment. In 2021 Ghana He spent less than 0.5% of the national health budget on specific care for the elderly. This is brief -sighted. Healthier, involved older adults reduce family burdens, boost social capital, and can even contribute economically through training and mentoring of others.

In the communities I visited, I encountered grassroots interventions worth scaling: church youth groups providing weekly food support, Association of Retirees checking members and intergenerational sessions of stories stories that rebuild emotional ties.

In the tradition of Ghana, the elders are considered live libraries. Their absence in municipal space is not only a social loss, but also cultural erasing.

If the elderly are neglected, everyone can one day wake up on the wrong side of the demographic line, wondering if they will also be forgotten.