Uganda becomes the newest member to participate

With the growing importance of standards in the field of ageing societies more ISO members are looking to participate in ISO/TC 314. The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the vulnerable position of the ageing population and how many services and products are not appropriate for their needs. We look to improve this through standards development. The ISO/TC 314 leadership encourages those countries not yet participating to take the opportunity to explore the solutions together with us.

Last year Uganda joined the technical committee, and we asked The Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) to share with us the reasons for joining the committee. Here Dr Safina N. Ngobya share her views:

"Uganda through UNBS decided to join ISO TC 314 – Ageing societies in an attempt to deal with some of the challenges that come with ageing. With advancing age, one tends to be out of work and thus with little if any income, health problems set in leading to reduced mobility and reduced agility. The migration of the youth to the urban centres for greener pastures coupled with the loss of family members to other diseases such as HIV/AIDS, diabetes, and hypertension can also exacerbate the problem.

In the Ugandan society, we have social support where many of our older relatives tend to be accommodated by the younger family members; there are still older citizens who may not have younger relatives to help. The concept of having old people’s homes is rather new here and still costly to the ordinary Ugandan citizen. However, the societal problems exist such as continued isolation, dementia, fall – related accidents, lack of access to sanitary facilities and services as having nobody to cook, clean and wash for you, not being able to go to hospital, shops etc. Without a source of income, one may not even be in position to have lighting in the home made of low cost materials such as mud and wattle. It gets so bad that at times one may not even have someone collect for them water for personal hygiene from the well. Modern construction today requires the effective use of space i.e. with storeyed buildings the use of rumps and lifts is now becoming a necessity. Reading and writing, use of public transport, also pose peculiar challenges for the elderly. We are also getting an increase in cases of the elderly being thrown out of their homes due to societal pressure to construct improved structures.

As UNBS, it is our hope that standardization in this area will help solve the challenges that come with ageing by way of increasing their autonomy and independence for example through:

• handling the problems associated with the security and safety of the elderly suffering from dementia, less agility from rape, theft and criminal gangs;
• helping solve the challenges that come with using the mass public transport e.g. through having cars that have automatic carriers/lifters so the elderly do not have to climb into the car;
• increasing the retirement age for those who can still handle certain tasks thus helping fight isolation and boredom while providing some income for the family.
• increasing protection from the elements of weather or rather extreme climatic conditions like flooding, mud slides etc; and
• mechanising simple tasks as applicable;
• providing more information for the elderly to use while moving around the communities, use of braille, hearing aids, visuals, graphic information etc.

It is against the above background that UNBS is desirous to participate actively in this work."

 

If you are interested to get involved, please contact the committee manager to hear more information about the committee: [email protected].