Issues of Ageing Addressed during Lecture

ZIZ News — On Wednesday night, The Ripple Institute and the IWU Open Campus hosted the first in a series of lectures aimed at promoting healthy ageing.

Dr. Joan Rawlins spoke on the topic “Ageing in the Caribbean: Exploring some of the Social Issues.”

During the opening ceremony, Dr. Izben Williams, President and CEO of The Ripple Institute said the culture of the world is changing and is discarding the worth of the elderly.

He noted, “Over the past hundred years in St. Kitts and Nevis and the rest of the world, life expectancy has just about doubled and what has not kept pace with that is acknowledgement of elderly in our society, programming after that acknowledgment and educating a community to respond to this mushrooming of elderly citizens, this serious sector that should be.”

He said healthy ageing is an issue that should be discussed by everyone.

“Seventy percent of age related disease is related to lifestyle. Lifestyle that does not begin at 75. It begins much earlier as you know and so we have more power over our ageing process and the end result that we might care to admit.”

Other lectures will cover ‘public education on the care of the elderly’, ‘healthy ageing and health promotion’, and ‘spirituality in ageing’.