On April 15, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) released a series of policy briefs on long-term care for governments across Latin America and the Caribbean. Driven by aging and the rise of chronic illness and disability, the briefs put numbers to a simple fact: a family-dependent care model has reached its structural limit.
Eight million people
In Latin America and the Caribbean, about 14.4% of people over 65 — some 8 million in total — need continuous help with daily life. Bathing, dressing, eating, moving, managing medication: basic acts that are hard to do alone, and impossible without another person. That share is projected to rise to 16% by 2050. The figure may still read as “14%,” but the support system has already fallen behind.
Seventy percent, unpaid, by women
Today roughly 70% of long-term care is provided unpaid by women within the family. They leave the labor market to care for aging parents or disabled relatives, and age without accumulating social-insurance contributions. PAHO’s briefs take the problem head-on, urging governments to improve the rights and conditions of care workers. Where braces and home-support devices are scarce, the physical burden on families is heavy too. The thinner the system, the more individuals and families wear down in its place — a pattern I have seen again and again in disability policy.
The wall in front of “home and community, not institutions”
What PAHO stresses repeatedly is that care should happen at home and in the community, not in institutions — lower cost than residential care, and easier on a person’s dignity, autonomy and preferences. But making home care work presupposes community support networks, a deployed care workforce, and secured financing. The treatment gap for mental illness reaches 77.9% across Latin America and the Caribbean. Dementia, meanwhile, affects more than 10 million people across the Americas as a whole, a figure PAHO expects to double every twenty years; in Latin America and the Caribbean alone, an estimated 6.9 million in 2020 is projected to reach about 19 million by 2050. Every year spent unprepared adds to the burden that is accruing right now.
Needing care is something none of us can avoid. A country that hasn’t decided who will provide it will pay for the delay.
References
- PAHO/WHO — paho.org
- PAHO/WHO — Policy briefs — paho.org
- Searchlight — searchlight.vc
- Mexico Business News — mexicobusiness.news
※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.