Systems of care for frail older persons

As stated by the Director-General of the World Health Organization in her speech to the fifty-first World Health Assembly in Geneva, on May 13, 1998: "We have another transition, the transition from the communicable to the non-communicable diseases." Also as she pointed out, an appropriate degree of attention to acute infectious illness is not at odds with a special emphasis on chronic conditions and the consequences of chronic disease. In her words, "They cannot be seen as competing tasks. They are complementary. We need to fight both. The burden of disease is the burden of unfulfilled human development" (1). Nowhere is this viewpoint more important than in the prevention of frailty and the design of systems of care for the frail elderly so as to maximize function and quality of life.