A/HRC/18/37 The ageing of world population demands that immediate steps be taken to ensure that the costs of pension schemes and their analogues not be prohibitively burdensome for States. Failure to recognize older persons as rights-holders may lead to prejudice and discrimination directed against individuals or groups and may have profound consequences for their health outcomes and welfare. 15. Treating older persons as a homogenous group is incorrect and needs to be rectified. In developing a more comprehensive approach to the enjoyment of the right to health of older persons, it is important to both collect and analyse disaggregated data and develop appropriate strategies for diverse groups. 16. When appropriate, clinical trials should be conducted with the participation of older persons in order to determine the effect of these medications on that population group, due to the frequency with which older persons may use these medications. Given the substantial underrepresentation of older patients in studies on various diseases, clinical trial recruitment should be diversified to include a number of considerations including age, gender and race. 17. Differences between the genders in respect of the ageing process must also be acknowledged, given that global life expectancy at birth for women is currently 70 years, and is significantly higher than for men at 66 years.10 Given differing life expectancies, it is more often men who are able to rely on informal care from their spouses than women. Women who outlive their husbands are more often left with no spousal support, relying on informal care by other relatives or the formal care system.11 Compounding this problem is the fact that older women are frequently excluded from social security and health insurance schemes that are linked to formal, paid employment. They are also at much greater risk of poverty than men. In many countries older women are less likely than men to hold valuable assets in their own name (A/HRC/14/31, paras. 19-21). These factors limit women’s ability to provide for their own health-related needs in later life. Furthermore, lack of access to health care services for debilitating diseases such as cancer and hypertension, or illnesses disproportionately affecting women such as osteoporosis, have also been noted to prevent older women from enjoying their full human rights (CEDAW/C/GC/27). 18. The Special Rapporteur believes that States should allocate more resources for the provision of geriatric healthcare in order to ensure that all healthcare workers, irrespective of specialty or profession, are adequately trained to deal with the particular health issues associated with ageing. They should also be trained on the right to health so that they interact with elderly patients in an appropriate, considerate and non-discriminatory manner. III. The right to health of older persons 19. The right to the highest attainable standard of health is a fundamental human right, legally enshrined at the international, regional and national levels. The enjoyment of the right to health is recognized by numerous international human rights instruments, including those that have been created to protect the human rights of particular groups, such as children, women, persons with disabilities and those who are subject to discrimination on the basis of race (E/CN.4/2003/58, paras. 10-21). The most important formulation of the right to health is contained in article 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social 10 11 6 WHO, World Health Statistics (WHO, Geneva, 2010), p. 56. WHO and The Institute for Alternative Futures, A long-term care futures toolkit (Geneva, WHO, 2002), p. 21.