A/HRC/42/43/Add.1 to ensure integrated social and health-care services for older persons. This will require more effort and expenditure by the Government on health and care infrastructure to provide alternatives for older persons. 96. The Independent Expert recommends that the Government consider introducing a universal non-contributory old-age pension. In the meantime, she urges the Government to continue its efforts to ensure universal coverage of the existing means-tested non-contributory old-age pension as a means of contributing to poverty alleviation, particularly among older women and older Afro-Uruguayans, given that the ratio of older persons is expected to increase in the years to come. 97. The Independent Expert also urges Uruguay to intensify its efforts to guarantee universal social security coverage, particularly for women engaged in unpaid work or in the informal sector. Furthermore, she urges Uruguay to ensure that it will provide adequate benefits for all and that the minimum benefits furnished under noncontributory programmes are sufficient to provide members of the most disadvantaged and ostracized groups with decent living conditions. 6. Education, training and lifelong learning 98. While educational programmes should not target older persons exclusively, as that would be limiting and could lead to the creation of spaces of social exclusion, the Independent Expert stresses that there is a need to ensure access to education and training in old age, taking into account the specific interests and needs of older persons, especially as they learn differently from younger persons. 99. The Independent Expert recommends that a strategy of lifelong learning that adequately responds to the needs of older persons be elaborated to enable them to cope with constantly changing circumstances, requirements and challenges, for their active participation in society and for an independent life continuing into old age. 7. Care 100. The Independent Expert recommends that Uruguay develop a comprehensive long-term care policy, taking into account input from older persons themselves at all levels, and ensure a human rights-based approach in the design and delivery of longterm care. 101. In view of the population dynamics of Uruguay, the Independent Expert stresses the need to further develop community services for older person as well as home help and day-care centres to enable older persons to stay in their primary environment for as long as possible and to allow the postponement of their accommodation in nursing homes. She recommends that sufficient alternative accommodation services be developed, such as family accommodation for older persons or community-supported housing. Such alternative models could utilize the existing resources of older persons themselves, if adequate legal protection is in place. 102. The Independent Expert emphasizes that older persons with dementia must have their dignity, beliefs, needs and privacy respected at all stages of the disease and urges the Government to ground action in these areas in human rights. She stresses the need to urgently create adequate accommodation capacities as well as standards for the accommodation of older persons suffering from dementia, with functional links made with medical services and the health-care system. 103. The Independent Expert calls upon the Government to ensure universal coverage of palliative care for older persons. She recommends that it further explore the development of community-based palliative care, for instance in the context of home help and day care for terminally ill older persons, and the provision of palliative care in new retirement homes for older persons, as well as the development of hospices to accommodate older persons suffering from incurable diseases. 104. Given the growing number of older patients, the basics of gerontology and geriatrics, and how to interact with older patients, should become part of all medical professional training and pursue a biopsychosocial instead of a merely biomedical 16