HuffPost: Memo to Dr. Tedros: Your WHO Leadership
Michael Hodin, CEO of Global Coalition on Aging

“…We know that there are nearly one billion of us over 60 today, moving inexorably to two billion by mid-century, and yet the WHO’s 13th General Program of Work — their work plan for the next five years during Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s first term — does not account for this profound shift in the population mix of more old than young. … There’s still time to revise the 13th General Program of Work to reflect the reality that older people are at least as important as the children. That change would empower policy advocacy not only to treat disease, but as your own WHO Aging and Health Strategy smartly advocates, also to achieve functional ability as we age. … So, of course Dr. Tedros, let’s have health policy for the children. Not least if we want all of us to have healthier aging in the 21st century where our children and theirs will have 100-year lives that must include healthy living that starts as babies. But the nearly one billion of us over 60 are not to be ignored, either…” (11/8).