Aging population in Bangladesh: a new and important group in terms of social and health policy of a country

The ratio of aged population in Bangladesh is much higher than any other developing nations around the world. It is projected that by the year 2025, the country alongside other countries in the south Asian zone will record an approximate half of the total aged population in the world. Though it is anticipated that due to religious and cultural tradition in Bangladesh, generally the old people are being taken care of by their families, but factors such as transition of socio-economic and demographic trend, changing social core values resulted from foreign cultural invasion, poverty and other numerous structural features, have destroyed the traditional system of care and have set various challenges and concerns related with their livelihood and status, social help, and wellbeing. This changing situa-tion influence the policy evaluators to consider the issue of aging dynamics an affirmative way so that they can and vow appropriate strategies and to incorporate this issue in the mainstream development activities with the intention that Bangladesh can pick up a sustainable future. In this regard, the government of Bangladesh along with different non-governmental organization have already taken different policy initiatives to set forward the issue of aging welfare related awareness and activities; however, all of these are not functioning correctly. As such, all the inclusive understandings among the rule makers indicate the importance of the issue of aging population which put emphasis that social beliefs and traditional customs should be revived to benefit this specific group.