**5. National Programme for health Care for Elderly (NPHCE)**

Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) is responsible for implementing the National Programme for Health Care of Elderly (NPHCE) through primary, secondary and tertiary services, dedicated for older persons. NPHCE functions under the control, coordination and monitoring and supervision of the national, state and district cells for non-communicable diseases (NCD). NPHCE was launched to provide referral services through district hospitals and regional medical colleges for elderly population and to promote a community based approach for integration of existing primary health centers and capacity building [1, 15, 17].

The Vision of the NPHCE are: (1) Provision of accessible, affordable, and high quality long-term, comprehensive and dedicated care services to elderly population (2) Creation of a new "architecture" for Aging (3) Building a framework for creation of an comfortable environment for "a Society for all Ages;" (4) Promotion of the concept of Active and Healthy Aging.

Specific objectives of the programme are: (1) Provision of an easy access to promotional, preventive, curative and rehabilitative services through community based primary health-care (PHC) approach. (2) Identification of health problems in the elderly and provide appropriate health interventions in the community with a strong referral backup support. (3) Capacity building of the medical and paramedical professionals as well as the caregivers within the family for providing health care to the elderly (4) Provide referral services to the elderly patients through district hospital and regional medical institutions cum colleges.

Few strategies to achieve the above mentioned objectives of the NPHCE are given as mentioned below:


Expected outcomes of NPHCE are given as mentioned below:


## **5.1 Geriatric health care services in private sector**

There are four essential features of an integrated package of elder services in private sector as given below [1]:


While NPHCE and IPOP address aspects related to institutional health care, the rest of the aspects are facilitated by NGOs all over the country with public and private funding. Few NGO initiatives to deal with the health and social problems of elderly in India are as mentioned below:


### **6. Conclusion**

India is fighting strongly to mitigate the Covid 19 pandemic situation with its limited manpower and economy. Many government programmes and initiatives were launched and coming forward to develop to meet the needs of its vulnerable population like pregnant mother, adolescent, children and elderly since its independence. Public Health Foundation of India has recently launched another programme for training primary health care professionals in Geriatric health care among this most challenging time of Covid 19 pandemic which shows the distant vision of decision makers of health care delivery system in our country. We need to motivate and encourage our young medical graduates to enhance their knowledge and skills in geriatric health to decrease mortality and morbidity in elderly with such types of pandemic in future.


#### **Table 1.**

*Package of services for elderly in different levels of health care delivery system under NPHCE are given below.*
