Alongside the G20 Health Ministers’ meeting in Gandhinagar, India, in August, ILC-India and ILC-UK will be holding a joint high-level side event to amplify the importance of healthy ageing and prevention among the G20.

At this high-level debate, we will set out how the G20 during India’s presidency can maximise the economic benefits that come with living longer and hear from experts, including ILC-I, on the opportunities and barriers for healthy ageing in India. We will use evidence from our Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index, which we launched alongside the 76th World Health Assembly this year. This event in India also follows a series of global influencing activities that we’ve held alongside the G7 Finance Ministers’ meeting and the G7 Leaders’ Summit in Japan.

The Healthy Ageing and Prevention Index is meant to hold governments to account on healthy ageing and inform decision makers on what can be done to maximise the economic benefits that come with living longer and investing in preventative health. It is an online interactive tool which ranks 121 countries and political and economic country blocs on six healthy ageing metrics: life span, health span, work span, income, environmental performance, and happiness. The G20 finds itself ranked 8th out of 9 political and economic blocs, performing better than the African Union, but worse than the EU, OECD and G7 among others.

But the G20 could do better. The economic benefits of harnessing this longevity dividend could be enormous as populations continue to increase and grow older. Across the G20, just a 0.1 percentage point increase in preventative health spend can unlock an additional 9% of spending. Investing in preventative interventions like life-course immunisation is estimated to bring a 4-fold return.

Chair: David Sinclair, Chief Executive, ILC-UK

Speakers so far include:

Stephen Hickling, Deputy High Commissioner to Gujarat and Rajasthan, British Deputy High Commission
Arunima Himawan, Senior Health Research Lead, ILC-UK
Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Director, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)
Esther McNamara, Senior Health Policy Lead, ILC-UK
Dr Surjit Singh, Director, WHO Collaborating Centre for Paediatric Immunology
Shri Jayant Umranikar, Chair, ILC-India

Session slides