27 August 2024, Islamabad, Pakistan – The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination (MoNHSR&C) convened the third meeting of the National Technical Working Group (TWG) on Healthy Ageing on 9 August 2024 in Islamabad.
The TWG includes representatives from MoNHSR&C, federal and provincial social welfare departments, academia, the WHO and NGOs working on healthy ageing in Pakistan. The meeting was chaired by Dr Sofia Yunus, MoNHSR&C Deputy Director General, and joined by senior officials including Dr Maryam Sarfraz, Director of Programmes, Dr Malik Muhammad Safi, Senior Health Advisor, Dr Raza Zaidi, Evidence for Health (E4H) Technical Director and Dr Fouzia Hanif, Assistant Director of Programmes.
Dr Samar El Feky, Regional Advisor and focal point on the health of older people based at the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, was also present and shared global and regional updates on strengthening health system responses to the needs of older people in line with United Nations Decade on Healthy Ageing (2021–30) commitments.
The TWG reviewed Pakistan’s draft National Policy Framework on Healthy Ageing and provided feedback for its finalization. It also agreed that TWG membership should be expanded to ensure representation of relevant sectors across the country given that the healthy ageing agenda requires multisectoral collaboration.
Dr El Feky provided an outline of WHO’s Integrated care for older people (ICOPE) guidelines, and offered Regional Office support to build the capacity of health providers at the primary health care (PHC) level through the WHO collaborating centre for healthy ageing in Doha, Qatar.
The meeting agreed that a situation analysis to inform the policy framework finalization be undertaken, and to advocate for provincial authorities to identify districts (1 per province/area) to test the implemention of ICOPE guidance at PHC level and take part in WHO-organized ICOPE capacity building activities.
Recognizing the importance of data and monitoring, it was agreed that Dr Asghar Zaidi should give a presentation on global monitoring and evaluation frameworks on healthy ageing at the next TWG meeting.
It was also recommended that WHO should develop a separate module on healthy ageing to be integrated in the data collection tool for service availability and readiness assessment (SARA).
Participants agreed that the next meeting of an enlarged TWG should take place in November 2024 and concluded the meeting with vote of thanks.
