Elderly population to rise by 414%

JAKARTA (JP): The population of elderly people is expected to increase by 414 percent between 1990 and 2025, a professor of medicine at Semarang's Diponegoro University said over the weekend.

R. Boedhi Darmojo said this meant an additional 20 million senior citizens by 2025.

The projected increase is the world's highest. The other high projection rates were 347 percent for Kenya, 255 percent for Brazil, 242 percent for India, 220 percent for China, 129 percent for Japan, 66 percent for Germany and 33 percent for Sweden.

Indonesia would have the highest percentage of post-retirement age people in 2020. Indonesia was in 10th place in 1980, Boedhi said.

"The increase in our country's elderly population will raise the cost of health care services in hospitals or nursing homes for the chronically ill," he said.

He urged health care services and nursing homes to treat the elderly fairly and humanely because their physical, psychological and socioecomic backgrounds varied. This would prevent unnecessary socioecomic costs and the need for total patient care.

Boedhi, also chairman of the university's Center for Gerontology and Geriatric Studies, said his findings showed that 71.2 percent of Indonesia's elderly population lacked formal education, especially women in rural areas.

"Many of them are unskilled workers. In urban areas 21.2 percent of the men and 7.5 percent of the women are professionals. In rural areas 4.2 percent of the men and 0.7 percent of the women are professionals," he said.

He said that with greater government and public attention the quality of life of the elderly was expected to improve as more Indonesians were better educated and lived longer as a result of development. (01)