| | September 20198IN MY OPINIONCREATING A HEALTH WORKFORCE FOR INDIA'S SENIORS: GERIATRIC CAREGIVERSBy Priya Anant, Co-Founder, Life Circle Health ServicesThe Importance of Geriatric Caregiving Is India a young nation or an old one? Most of us would answer- young! That's right. But, there is a rapidly growing segment of our population that needs attention and priority. These are seniors. People who are over 60 and face heightened possibilities of chronic health con-ditions like diabetes, hypertension and dementia. Many sick seniors see multiple specialists for co-mor-bidities and have prescriptions, life-style recommendations from each of these, which need to be made sense of. In most instances, it is families that synchronise care for their fam-ily members. This places significant care burden on such family mem-bers. This scenario creates the need and an opportunity for a new cadre of healthcare workforce: Geriatric Caregivers. These are workers who are willing to work in homes of se-niors, with their families, taking on the part of the work of caregiving. `Caregiving refers to the provision of assistance to another person who is ill, disabled, or needs help with daily activities. It often requires attention to the physical, mental, social, and psychological needs and well-being of both the family caregivers and the elderly person requiring care'.Boasting of hacing over two deacdes of experience, Priya has worked with Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust, Byrraju Foundation, and ACCESS Health International, prior to founding Life Circle in 2013..The Growth of Home Healthcare ServicesWe have seen a spurt in Home healthcare services in India over the last 4-5 years. We have seen the emergence of large enterpris-es and huge investments being pumped in. Home health care in-cludes an entire gamut of services to populations of all ages and across conditions. It includes services of nursing, caregiving, telecon-sultations, diagnostics, intensive care, physiotherapy, medicine and consumables supply and rental of medical devices.Home health care has a clear edge over care in hospitals. Industry estimates allude to home care being cheaper by about 20-50 percentage, compared with institutional care. The non-monetary benefits by way of disruption to the life of family members, convenience to seniors is significant. Global evidence shows that effective home care services for seniors can lower burdens on the already crowded institutions, prevent emergency hospital visits, avoid healthcare associated infec-tions, accidents and avert danger-ous conditions benefitting from early diagnosis and treatment or preventive care.Who are the Professional Caregivers?Looking specifically at the home health care for geriatric popula-tions, one of the most significant questions facing all enterprises in this industry is the availability of good quality caregivers. Human Resource challenges are not new to the Indian healthcare system. How-ever, the workforce challenge in this context has some peculiar aspects that need attention. Our current caregivers are mostly young men
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