Ageing in the World : issues, challenges and prospect

     Ageing or aging are the two spellings you will likely to come across in the literature on ageing. "Ageing" is American word, but British also use it occasionally.

Ageing is purely British English. I intend to use "ageing" through out this topic because of sheer convenience, the British origin of our educational system, and the orientation of readers.

    The main purpose of this topic is to raise awareness about ageing issues in the World with undergraduate of the university, as a way of sensitize them about the challenges and the prospect of the issue. Firstly, i discussed the concept of ageing to provide basic information to readers as a basic for further reading on this.

Secondly, I described the various ways by which ages are characterised to stimulate people's interest in the topic of ageing and to continue to monitor where they belong at particular stage of their lives. Third, is a description of the demographic characteristics of ageing globally, and in particular, in the World, including age-sex composition, labour force distribution and disability patterns, to underscore the natural nature of the processes of ageing. Four, some of the challenges, which country of the world, including Nigeria would face as we witness ageing in individuals and ageing of population, are discuss to prepare people's minds ahead of their own intimate experience about ageing. Five, I made an attempt to raise the hope of students and other readers that ageing is a normal biological process, which most people would pray to have the privilege of experiencing, and which can cope with successful with adequate information and resources at one's disposal. Six, conclusion with summary and some concluding statements. Finally, i made some recommendations to get students and other readers thinking about some new ways of dealing with the issue of ageing and the older persons, with the hope that might also catch the attention of policy makers at all levels.

THE CONCEPT OF AGEING

    According to Woolf (1979), ageing means "to become old: show the effects or the characteristics of increasing age" 

Makama (2011) also defined it as "a process in which individuals move from birth to death"

Another definition is by Bowen and Atwood (2004), who define ageing as  " the accumulation of changes in a person over time." 

In general, an "old person" has a combination of attributes, which the society associate with old age. According to Togonu-Bickersteth (2001), such attributes include: greyness of hair, texture of the skin, number and ages of children and grandchildren, possession of store of knowledge, which will allow the old person to participate effectively in the society and so forth.

CATEGORISATION OF AGES

       It is usually convenient to divide ages of animals and humans into categories.

However, whatever categorisation scheme we use, they usually vary with cultures.

The categorisation used below is by Wikipedia (2012a)  we have broad categories of age from juvenile, through Early adulthood, middle adulthood, to late adulthood.

S/N.           Term                                                                        Age Range

1.           Juvenile(via infancy, childhood, preadolescence,       0-19

              adolescence (teenager)

2.           Early adulthood.                                                                 20-39

3.           Middle adulthood.                                                             40-59

4.           Late adulthood.                                                                   60+

CHALLENGES OF AGEING IN THE WORLD

As the world is experiencing population ageing because of improved health care, developing countries should be happy about this phenomenon because it is an indication of better health care.

At present there is in adequate number of trained personnel in the field of ageing to take care of older persons in the country. There are different layers of caregivers that can be useful to other persons. There is need for caregivers at home, hospitals, and older persons  centres. We need other personnel such as Nurses, physiotherapist, and Nutritionist to care for the aged.