Saving lives in emergencies

Conflict in the Middle East has devastated lives across the region, and millions have fled their homes.  Older people caught up in the crisis are facing hunger, dehydration, illness, injury and death. While older people are among those most at risk, their needs are often forgotten or ignored. In 2024, together with the DEC, Age International launched an appeal. 

Read more about the appeal:

UK public's extraordinary response to appeal

Following two major earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, the Disasters Emergency Committee launched an appeal. 50,783 people were killed, and 300,000 buildings were destroyed, leaving extremely traumatised and injured people homeless. In Syria, the disaster worsened an already dire situation following years of conflict. 

We worked with our partners to provide emergency support to over 86,000 older people and their families - including food, clean water, shelter, and longer-term support. Read our feature:

A year on from the earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria

In September 2022, 33 million people were affected by devastating flooding in Pakistan. Older people and their families lost homes, livestock and livelihoods and many were trapped by the floods, urgently needing help. The DEC and members including Age International launched an appeal to help provide shelter, food and water.

Pakistan Floods: One Year On

In 2014, more than four million people in Ukraine, a disproportionate number of them older, were directly affected by military conflict in the east of the country. Age International has been working there ever since to meet the needs of older people affected and help to rebuild lives through our partner HelpAge International.

With the onset of further conflict in Ukraine in 2022, the DEC and its member agencies, including Age International, launched an appeal. Age International scaled up its response through partners in Ukraine and Moldova to support older people left behind or fleeing the conflict.

Read 'War in Ukraine: Ongoing toll on older people'

In December 2021, Afghanistan was on the brink of a humanitarian disaster, suffering its worst drought in almost 30 years, causing crops to fail and acute hunger and malnutrition to reach record levels; more than 8 million people were on the brink of famine.

With a harsh winter approaching, the DEC and its member agencies including Age International launched the Afghanistan Crisis Appeal. Our response enabled older people to access the lifesaving essentials they urgently needed to survive the winter such as food, medicine and shelter. Find out how donations helped in our interactive feature. 

Afghanistan - an update

In early 2020, the spread of the life-threatening coronavirus (COVID-19) accelerated rapidly until it was declared a global pandemic. The virus poses a particularly high threat to older people and those with health conditions.

In March, Age International launched an appeal to help protect older people in high-risk places, responding in over 25 countries around the world, as well as taking part in the DEC appeal in July 2020.

In April 2021, the DEC appeal extended to include India as older people faced a deadly second wave.

In 2019 a serious cyclone caused devastation in three already-poor African countries - Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.

Your donations helped us to restore dignity to the older people affected, by making sure they had clean water, food, clothes and soap.

Our mobile medical teams - made up of nurses, social workers and trained volunteers - provided vital health and care support to older people who survived the disaster.  

Surviving Cyclone Idai

A woman finishes a meal in a camp for people who lost their homes, in Mozambique

After a terrible earthquake and tsunami destroyed lives in Indonesia, we were able to reach vulnerable older people who might otherwise be overlooked with essentials like walking sticks, crutches, glasses, and clean water.

Psychological first aiders have been helping older people to recover from mental trauma. Volunteer carers have been visiting older people in their temporary shelters to offer ‘at home’ support. Our eye care camps have helped hundreds of people with poor sight.

Next, we move into the long-term recovery stage of the programme - helping people to rebuild their lives.

103-year-old great-grandmother Sari now has clean water for drinking and cooking

Age International has helped refugees fleeing from Myanmar to Bangladesh, by setting up 'age-friendly spaces' (like the one pictured) in the refugee camps.

These special areas, which provide a haven to older men and women in the chaos of the camps, are visited by hundreds of refugees daily. There are doctors on-site to provide special medical care and two counsellors to treat trauma. Doctors also make home visits to people who cannot leave their tents.

Your donations have also helped Age International to run a number of eye operations - removing cataracts and restoring sight to thousands of refugees.

 In pictures: age-friendly spaces

To combat drought and hunger, Age International delivered water, food packs, drought-resistant seeds and livestock to older farmers living in remote hard-to-reach rural communities.

Conflict in Yemen left millions without food or clean water. Thanks to your donations in 2015 we are able to:

• Deliver healthcare and medicines to people who were cut-off from other services
• Donate life-saving drugs and equipment to main referral hospitals, saving numerous lives
• Train volunteers in first aid, to help those Yemenis who could not get to a clinic or hospital
• Use mobile clinics to reach remote communities, where many people had not received any medical assistance since the start of the conflict
• Reach more than 56 thousand people with healthcare and conduct over 18 thousand medical consultation

Immediately after the disaster Age International made sure older people had food, water, shelter, blankets - and even solar lamps to prevent falls at night.

In the later stages, we gave out cash so families could buy food and medicines, and provided glasses and cataract operations for those who needed them.

Finally, we helped people to rebuild stronger, better homes. And we made sure people could get back to work and earn a living again - by investing in their shops and farms.

During the Gaza Crisis, some older people were unable to leave their homes.

Age International delivered emergency hygiene kits – which contained soap, incontinence pads and other essentials. We also delivered mobility aids like wheelchairs & walking sticks.  

Finally, we created a day centre where people could come to feel safe and recover from trauma. The centre ran numerous group activities - including a literacy class where a number of older people learnt to read for the very first time.  

After the Philippines Typhoon, Age International worked with partners to reach extremely remote communities of older people with aid.

We gave people food, shelter and helped them to get back to their jobs. In cases where people couldn't return to work because their crops were destroyed and would take years to re-grow (as is the case with coconut farmers) we trained them in new skills and invested in their new work.

Finally, we supplied solar-powered radios to remote island communities - so that older people will have fair warning if disaster strikes again.