Government has launched a study to assess the health needs and issues of elderly people in the country. Launching the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI) in New Delhi yesterday, Health secretary BP Sharma said, the study is important due to the increasing population of elderly people in the country. He said, it will provide valuable data on their health needs and the issues faced by them given the changing social structures. Mr Sharma said, the study will help the Ministry to draw up policy tools to address the issues of elderly people. He stated that this is the largest survey of its kind and will survey more than 60,000 elderly people and provide data on their health needs. He also informed about the Health Protection Scheme announced in the recent Budget, which has a special component of 30,000 rupees for the elderly in the family.<br/><br/>LASI is the largest study on the elderly population in the country. The International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai in collaboration with Harvard School of Public Health and University of Southern California in the USA is undertaking it under the aegis of the Health Ministry. Health Ministry statement said population ageing is taking place in nearly all the countries and the global share of older people aged 60 years or over increased from 9.2 per cent in 1990 to 11.7 per cent in 2013 and will continue to grow as a proportion of the world population. Presently, about two thirds of the world's elderly people live in developing countries.