Policy statement: Physiotherapy services for older people

Older people: Generally defined according to a range of characteristics including: chronological age, change in social role and changes in functional abilities. In high-resourced countries older age is generally defined in relation to retirement from paid employment and receipt of a pension, at 60 or 65 years. With increasing longevity some countries define a separate group of oldest people, those over 85 years. In low-resourced situations with shorter life-spans, older people may be defined as those over 50 years. The age of 50 years was accepted as the definition of older people for the purpose of the WHO Older Adult Health and Ageing in Africa project.

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