Ra'ana Mahmood

Ra’ana Mahmood formed the Geriatric Care Foundation (GCF) of Pakistan to promote the welfare and well-being of the elderly and help meet the changing medical, legal, and social needs of senior citizens in Pakistan.

Ra’ana administers a host of programs ranging from medical care to advocacy for economic and social rights to address the needs of Pakistan’s elderly population. On the level of direct care, she runs a center for the elderly, providing medical and socio-legal assistance to help senior citizens overcome the many hardships they face. She brings the Pakistan Medical Association and Pakistani government together to create geriatric medical services in public health care facilities across the country, and helps to introduce geriatrics courses into the curricula of Pakistani medical schools.

On the level of policy, Ra’ana works with the federal government to defend the rights of senior citizens and to develop fair and effective policies in the areas of social work, employment, pensions, and public infrastructure for elderly care. She uses radio and print media to increase public awareness of issues affecting senior citizens and to keep her clients and their families informed on advances in methods of care. While various groups have attempted to address individual problems faced by the elderly, her Geriatric Care Foundation is the first in the country to advance the needs and interests of senior citizens through such a comprehensive set of programs and is respected for its pioneering work.

Ra’ana also benefits greatly from the latest in the related domains in advanced countries and translates those experiences toward her country through a calculated application. Her organization has also been accorded consultative status by the United Nations Economic and Social Council, a rare recognition.

In the last 50 years, the life expectancy in Pakistan has increased from 37 to 65 years. Elderly people now make up a larger section of Pakistani society than ever before. Their great and multiplying numbers, along with the economic pressures that come with globalization, have strained the traditional social structures that have supported elderly citizens in the past. These trends have caused senior citizens to become a marginalized group in Pakistan, with an increasingly large number even abandoned by their families at a disturbing frequency.

While children and extended families increasingly shirk their responsibilities to care for the elderly, the government has also proven unwilling to provide them with meaningful help. As a result, many senior citizens in Pakistan struggle with poverty and malnutrition. They often live alone, secluded from mainstream life, and a growing number find themselves without safe homes. Although their needs are unique, the elderly are frequently forced to compete with younger people for scarce public services. For instance, public health campaigns rarely vaccinate senior citizens against the flu, although they are far more vulnerable to it than younger adults.

Though the government provides some financial support to senior citizens, pension schemes are usually inadequate to the extent of being shamefully meager and available only to a small part of the population—usually those who were employed in public sector work. Workers in agriculture and those in the large informal sector receive less, or nothing at all. The millions of elderly citizens in Pakistan face harsh conditions with less resources than practically any other group in their country. The Government has failed to institute a focused medical assistance program for them along the lines of Medicaid or Medicare.

To improve the quality of life for older citizens, Ra’ana Mahmood mobilizes citizens, in particular the elderly and the concerned citizens around the work of the Geriatric Care Foundation of Pakistan. A major goal of the GCF is to increase public understanding of the needs of the geriatric community. To this end, Ra’ana has launched an education campaign in the country’s leading newspapers, magazines, and radio and television programs. She has recently persuaded the government to organize a series of seminars on geriatric care around the country. The GCF is also organizing Pakistan’s first International Conference on Aging, bringing together international gerontology experts and sociologists to focus on the problems of aging in Pakistan. They recruit these experts to help build a network of geriatric-care professionals from government, private, and citizen sectors.

The public awareness campaigns of the GCF have encouraged many elderly people to reach out for help in improving their lives. This is where the GCF care center comes in. The center provides medical and legal advice directly to senior citizens, along with referral services. Meanwhile, Ra’ana and her colleagues continuously advocate for seniors in the public sphere. They push the government to institute new services to improve the quality of life for senior citizens and to enact elder-friendly policies, including concessions in utility bills, exemptions from taxes, increases in interest rates earned on national saving certificates, and the establishment of senior recreation centers throughout the country. She is also pleading for the establishment of Day Care Centers and Nursing Homes for the elderly besides social wards in Hospitals.

Ra’ana is mobilizing senior citizen associations to advocate for themselves to the government, leading a campaign to establish elder people’s homes in Pakistan’s major cities. These homes would provide needed shelter and care for homeless, deserted and indigent seniors. They would be sustained by income generating programs, such as vegetable gardens, to help support the residents of these centers. The homes also may offer social services to non-elderly Pakistanis, such as day care centers for the children of working women and religious education classes for children.

Finally, GCF is working to enhance the public image of senior citizens—to remind all Pakistanis that the elderly have knowledge and expertise that is extremely valuable to others. Ra’ana believes that local senior citizen clubs, as well as geriatric wards in hospitals, could be designed to maximize the interaction between senior citizens and their younger neighbors, diminishing the alienation that many senior citizens feel and giving them a chance to prove their social value.

The GCF, like the entire field of geriatric care in Pakistan, is still in its early stages of development. Ra’ana will work without pause in the decades to come to transform her foundation into a powerful advocate and service provider for the elderly.