Participants in the "The Green Tent," affiliated with "A Flower Each Spring" programme have called for the need to develop strategic plans to benefit from the experiences of the elderly in all fields.
This is because many countries will face political and financial pressures due to the rapid increase in the number of elderly people to adopt healthy food systems and development in healthcare services.
During the seminar titled "Retirement is an inevitable phenomenon, what have we prepared for it", Dr Saif bin Ali al-Hajri, head of the "A Flower Each Spring" programme, expects aging to be one of the most prominent social transformations in the third millennium, because of its impact on all sectors of the labour and financial markets, and the demand for goods and services (housing, transportation, social protection etc). He explained that the prediction for 2050 indicate that one out of every six individuals in the world will be over 65 years old and that the number of people over the age of 80, will triple what they are now, pointing out that the United Nations General Assembly in 1982 had held a Conference on aging, which resulted in a plan of action in the areas of health and nutrition, protection of the elderly consumer, housing and the environment, family, social care, work, and income security, education, and the collecting and analysing of research data, leading to the allocation of the International Day of Older Persons, which is celebrated on the first of October each year.
A number of challenges can be observed in the work sector with the elderly, foremost of which is poverty that drives them to continue working to support their families, and wars and famines that most affect vulnerable groups, especially if old age is associated with a disability, Dr al-Hajri added.
He pointed out that the spread of nursing homes is a double-edged sword, the first is the threat of a value and religious system around the family structure by sending the elderly to a nursing home, and the second is the distinct and professional services that the elderly can receive in those homes.
In turn, experts, specialists, and doctors from different regions of the world in the seminar reviewed the status of the elderly in Islam and the extent of the honour and reverence that this group has enjoyed in the Holy Qur'an and the Sunnah, citing the verses, hadiths, and traditions that urge people to pay attention to this category and to take care and benefit from it.
Participants in the symposium presented practical experiences in serving the elderly through volunteer activities, benefiting from their experiences and publishing everything that supports them psychologically and socially, whether retired or self-employed, by organising training courses in this regard, in addition to organising special programmes to benefit from their experiences.
They also indicated that retirement is a new life.
On the World Health Organisation's website, a very important sentence says, "Behavioural disorders are among the most important causes that lead to physical illnesses." Therefore, it is necessary to maintain the psychological toughness of the retiree in this new stage, and not to override anxiety and depression, with a focus on social communication, building a base of new friends, and practising hobbies, while stressing the importance of exercise and proper nutrition for the sake of the psychological hardiness.