MoHAP marks International Day for Older Persons 2020

This occasion is also an opportunity to highlight and recognise the role of health workers in maintaining the health of older persons, through a number of the best health and preventive services and facilities to protect them from COVID-19 infection and to ensure their effective engagement in the UAE’s social fabric. Since COVID-19 outbreak, MoHAP, in cooperation with the competent authorities, has been keen to launch home testing campaigns to follow up on the health of senior citizens, with all the preventive and precautionary measures in place. This comes as part of MoHAP’s strategy aimed at providing senior citizens with distinctive healthcare services and implementing tailor-made health programs in recognition of their great stature in society. Further, MoHAP has launched a host of initiatives for older persons aimed at developing preventive and curative services, easing of administrative procedures, and giving them priority in appointments, dispensing medicines, and laboratory services, as part of the "Wareed" system. The Ministry-run hospitals offer senior citizens distinguished healthcare services, while the award-winning Obaidullah Elderly Hospital in Ras Al Khaimah is considered the first such hospital across the UAE, reflecting the efficiency of health services provided to the elderly in accordance with the latest international standards. Being one of the main indicators to measure the development of the health system in a country, life expectancy at birth in the UAE comes first among the Arab countries (77.2 years), while the healthy life expectancy index reached (66.7 years) according to the 2016's statistics.