Old­er peo­ple do not have to be ill and they should not wait for ill­ness to creep up to ad­dress health con­cerns, ad­vised Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan. He rec­om­mend­ed that apart from walk­ing, old­er peo­ple should lift weights to re­gain mus­cle strength and vol­ume, which di­min­ish­es with age.

He said his min­istry had al­ready im­ple­ment­ed ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grammes at hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres specif­i­cal­ly de­signed to ad­dress the con­cerns of old­er peo­ple. "We are do­ing all we could to en­sure that old­er peo­ple do not have lengthy waits at the hos­pi­tals and health cen­tres. When they come in, we want them to be at­tend­ed to with no has­sle and in a speedy man­ner," Khan added.

On com­plaints that old­er peo­ple of­ten had to wait for as long as two to three years for knee-re­place­ment surgery, Khan said the peo­ple who need­ed that par­tic­u­lar surgery was ".001 per cent" of the pop­u­la­tion. "Knee-re­place­ment surgery is not in the same cat­e­go­ry as a life-threat­en­ing emer­gency surgery. "The old­er peo­ple who need knee-re­place­ment surgery have been over­weight and did lit­tle or no ex­er­cise."

Tips for healthy age­ing

• Stay so­cia­ble, main­tain and in­crease your net­work of friends and ac­quain­tances

• Keep in con­tact with old friends and neigh­bours if you move in with a rel­a­tive or change ad­dress

• Ask friends to vis­it

• Have your own tele­phone and e-mail ac­count

• Eat right

• Main­tain a sense of in­de­pen­dence

•Keep mov­ing and ex­er­cis­ing

• Stay in touch with your spir­i­tu­al­i­ty

• Laugh and have a sense of hu­mour

• Get le­gal ad­vice for pos­si­ble fu­ture dis­abil­i­ty

Source: www.cb­snews.com