We have paper everywhere for the elderly
What strategy has the government developed for the elderly
Nadezhda Petrova, published on the website SIA.RU
The Russian population is aging, and the government is increasingly liking the concept of active longevity, which is popular in the West. At least on paper – in real life, an archaic healthcare system and an extremely inefficient bureaucracy interfere.
Strategic stuffingThe story with the strategy of actions in the interests of senior citizens turned out to be the usual, Shakespearean, which often happen in the system of public administration: at first it seems to be powerful initiatives, and then you don't know what to call them better, so as not to violate the rules of decency.
One of the interlocutors of "Money", for example, preferred to use the word "stuffing". However, in such situations, a formal approach always saves: anyway, the document published by the Ministry of Labor on the "single portal" is a draft of the very Strategy of Actions in the interests of elderly citizens until 2025, which the President of the Russian Federation spoke about a year ago. The long-awaited answer to the "request for a new, modern policy" in this area.
The first, relatively small (although occupying exactly half of the document), problem is that, it seems, the authors of the project tried to understand the content of the request for a new policy, remembering what state benefits are already used or theoretically can be used by 33.8 million citizens of retirement age (women over 55 and men over 60). And if you remember everything – from receiving pensions to the annual Spartakiad of pensioners of Russia, then the thought arises that everything is fine with the state policy towards the elderly: measures cannot be insufficient, one description of which requires at least 30 pages.
But, since the presence of the request still implies some kind of shortage, the authors begin to want strange things, for example, clothes, shoes and "special multicomponent food" for senior citizens. "It is clear that all groups of the population, not only the elderly, should have a healthy diet. But to develop some special products, instead of just trying to balance the diet... In any case, this is the first time I've seen this," admits Oksana Sinyavskaya, a leading researcher at the HSE Center for Income and Living Standards Analysis. – In general, the project is vague, and it is unclear to whom it is addressed. It has a little bit about employment, about social services, about special transport – it's about everything and nothing."
A pensioner with potentialTheoretically, older Russians have no less opportunities to spend their old age with taste than older Europeans.
At least, an attempt by Oksana Sinyavskaya and her colleagues Anna Ermolina and Maria Varlamova to calculate the European Active Longevity Index for Russia yielded a result slightly lower than the average European one (31.1% vs. 33.5%). But the index does not measure the quality of life, but rather the potential for active, healthy longevity. And the good result of the Russian Federation is largely due to the high level of education of older Russians.
High values of a couple more indicators are unlikely to please with careful consideration. Relative indicators of the material well–being of Russian pensioners compared to the able–bodied population turned out to be comparable to the EU average. But, as noted in the report of Sinyavskaya and her colleagues, this may be due to the fact that "thanks to social transfers... in rural areas, old people often live better than the able-bodied population."
At the same time, as follows from the HSE report, elderly Russians lag behind Europeans in terms of employment, participate less often in volunteer activities, often live with children (52% live separately – less than in any of the EU countries), assess their psychological state worse and rarely maintain active social contacts. Only 40% of people over the age of 55 meet with friends, relatives or colleagues at least several times a week.
There is no health, there will be no workLow life expectancy and poor health are perhaps the main things that hinder the active longevity of elderly Russians.
"For a society with our level of health of elderly people, the situation with their employment looks generally good," Sinyavskaya emphasizes. According to Rosstat, the economic activity of the elderly has fluctuated around 30% in recent years, and unemployment in this category of the population is 2-3% (in 2014, the absolute number of elderly unemployed, that is, those who, despite retirement, were looking for work and were ready to start it, amounted to 196 thousand people).
True, Sinyavskaya notes, the situation can still be improved through "demand–side" measures - hidden discrimination and the negative attitude of employers towards the elderly have not gone away, but in general, given the "bouquet of chronic pathologies" that appear by this age, we can say that "everyone who can work works for us".
However, here the question arises not only to the draft strategy, but also "in general to the policy of the state": "It is often difficult to fix something by retirement age. Our research, the research of our colleagues show that, obviously, more investments in healthcare are needed in order to improve the health of the population," Sinyavskaya believes.
Public involvement"Taking into account how elderly people live today, with their income level and their disregard for health, the main thing is the medical and social component," Nyuta Federmesser, president of the Vera Hospice Care Foundation, who participated in the work on the project, is convinced.
"It was important for me that the strategy should include a combination of geriatric and palliative care and medical and social interaction," she emphasizes.
"All over the world, the majority of palliative care is palliative geriatrics – assistance to elderly people who are approaching the extreme point of their lives, who have a lot of chronic age-related diseases, not necessarily oncological. Palliative care is needed for elderly people with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinsonism, bedridden patients after strokes – most of them are over 65 years old, explains Federmesser. – We cannot say that we will help seriously ill, especially long-term ill, elderly people, if we only treat them, but we will not provide them with social assistance and protection."
The second crucial point, according to her, is the training of staff for patient care. "There are more and more elderly people, and the system of long-term care homes and outpatient palliative care, hospitals at home, field services will need to be developed very quickly. It will be necessary to adapt to the demand of the population for this assistance, and there are no staff right now."
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru
23.06.2015