Closing the gap between generations

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1770

Published 23 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1770
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1770

Letters

Tackling health inequalities

Closing the gap between generations

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A key determinant of social and healthcare inequities is missingfrom the World Health Organization’s report to reducehealth inequities related to social injustice¹ ²:interest inpatients decreases as they become "geriatric" patients.

After the deaths of thousands of elderly people in the heatwave of summer 2003, affected countries discovered that manyelderly people were totally isolated and socially excluded.³This illustrates a tendency to focus less on elderly people,except on special occasions. General medical journals, includingthe BMJ, have such a tendency and underestimate the importanceof geriatric care.

Using the age specific search strategies recommended by Kastneret al,⁴ we found that between 1980 and 2005, numbers of publicationsindexed as geriatric in the five most cited general medicaljournals were around 11% and falling (S Tassy et al, unpublisheddata). During the same period, the numbers of people aged 65and older constantly increased, . . . [Full text of this article]

Sébastien Tassy, geriatrician¹, Frederique Retornaz¹

¹ Department of Psychiatry, Pr Azorin, Sainte Marguerite University Hospital, 270 Boulevard Sainte Marguerite, Marseilles 13009, France

sebastientassy@ap-hm.fr