CHAPTER 6

Healthy early life and living habits lead to longer, more productive, and better-quality lives, as well as reducing fertility problems. For Serbia to have a small, healthy and productive population, it should consider further developing good quality preventive health care services. Various actors should engage in this, ranging from government to schools and companies, and to families and individuals. Innovative health, labour, tax, education and other policies should contribute to this. On the other hand, population ageing requires existing health policy frameworks to adapt to new demographic conditions by developing innovative health services for older people, developing formal care for older people to reduce the burden on families, improving palliative care, etc. Although at first glance the responsibility for the health of individuals falls on the health care system and themselves, New demographic realities mean that the responsibility for the health of individuals should be shared by the society as a whole rather than just the healthcare systems and individuals themselves, while good health becomes part of the broader priority of caring for society’s human resources.