The Caribbean Symposium on Population Ageing which was chaired by Professor Karl Theodore, coordinator of the Health Economics Unit, commenced with a formal opening ceremony. The following persons delivered greetings and opening remarks Mr. Rudolf Buitelaar, UNECLAC; Dr. Lilian Reneaud-Vernon, PAHO/WHO; Ms. Hetty Sarjeant, UNFPA; Mr. Keith Gooden, MERCK Sharp & Dohme; Dr. Phyllis Pitt-Miller, UWI; Dr. Denise Eldemire, PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre for Ageing and Health, UWI, Mona Campus, Jamaic; Senator, the Honourable, Mustapha Abdul-Hamid – Ministry of Social Development, Trinidad and Tobago.

The government forum was held with the presence of 16 Caribbean countries along with representatives from the national and regional civil society. Arising out of the discussions at the meeting, significant to Caribbean countries seems to be the establishment of an administrative and legal framework to provide quality services to the elderly.

Most government statements identified the following critical issues as priority areas for further action: Economic and social security; Health care and ageing; Housing, transport and living conditions; Demographic ageing and intergenerational solidarity; Ageing and gender; Mainstream ageing into broad national development agenda; and further academic research.

The fact that ageing populations are a reality in the Caribbean means that the growing concern now is how best to add not only years to life but also to make these additional years worthwhile to live. This was a major area of focus for the conference. All participants agreed that this symposium should be taken as a unique opportunity for Caribbean governments as well as civil society to share best practices, to identify gaps in the implementation of policies and programmes and to come up with a way forward to strengthen the Caribbean in the implementation of the Madrid Plan of Action and various regional and subregional agreements already adopted. A steering committee, with members from governments, civil society and academia was established to provide guidance on how to continue cooperation and collaboration among the critical stakeholders within and outside the Caribbean. The participants strongly supported the idea of setting up a Caribbean Ageing Network as a mechanism to share best practices and to develop modalities for south-south cooperation within the Caribbean and to facilitate networking between governments, academia and civil society within as well as outside the Caribbean sub-region. Academics present suggested the creation of a resource center for researchers to coordinate ongoing and planned research on ageing and it was agreed that the University of the West Indies would be the ideal institution to launch such an effort.

A report of the academic forum and the intergovernmental conference along with the country statements is currently being prepared by the organizers and will be made available to the participants in early 2005.