Editorial Ageing Tends to Creep up on us Sooner than we Imagine... It Happens to Public Health Professionals, too!

medicine have made longevity a reality for millions of people across the world, and never before in recent history have the global older adult (60 years and older) population grown in such large numbers and proportion. The world’s older adult population is growing by an unprecedented 800,000 people a month, and the number of elderly people increased more than threefold since 1950 from approximately 130 million (about four percent of global population) to 419 million (6.9%) in 2000 ’. Additionally, according to the United Nations, the number of people aged 60 and older are projected to increase from 629 million in 2002 to nearly two billion in 20502. While Europe has the highest proportion of older adults, other regions around the world, including Asia, will begin to age rapidly in coming decades3. A 1998 World Health Organisation report stated that by 2020, of the ten countries with the largest elderly populations in the world, five will be in the developin