Population growth rate and the fertility rate is getting under control faster than expected in India and helping the nation to progress towards stabilized population and demographic transition. According to Indian government data, country’s total fertility rate is just 0.2 points away from reaching the replacement level as early as 2020 or 2022.
Thus, India is slowly picking up in the race of population stabilization. But in that race, it is also progressing towards the challenge of the increasing elder population. A growing elderly population brings with it issues which need to be addressed with the mutual support of the community and the family.
Indians are family oriented and from the childhood, we are living in the society where our elders and parents live with us.We, however, need to admit that we are not necessarily competent to provide professional care to elders, nor do we have an adequate (public and private) infrastructure and human resource to do so. Further, it is a lost opportunity when a qualified resource, namely women of the country are compelled to drop off from productive careers to substitute as caregivers and stay at home.There is a pressing need to build a community which can address all these issues and share the responsibility with each other.
The endeavour should be to build an intergenerational ecosystem which includes business, neighbors, volunteers and welfare organizations to provide comprehensive community care in age-friendly/elder-friendly environment.
As a key component of the care ecosystem, India needs to invest in building a large contingent of professional caregivers’ that is knowledgeable and can provide affordable care at home and in hospitals.
To address this imperative, iCare Life is working towards creating a pool of trained and certified Caregivers. Trained caregivers who are competent and reliable in taking care of your loved ones.iCare Life is leveraging its proprietary content, a robust delivery platform, alliances with numerous hospitals and NGOs, to skill and assess caregivers and make them available to care seekers.
