The World Health Organization launched an initiative on Monday to improve medical services for the elderly in a bid to tackle the growing public health implications of a rapidly aging global population.

The number of people aged 60 and above is expected to double to 1.2 billion by 2025, and reach two billion by 2050, threatening a sharp increase in chronic diseases, the WHO said.

The initiative, launched by the WHO at an aging conference in Singapore, centers on retraining primary healthcare workers to focus more on elderly care, and to improve facilities and ensure greater access to healthcare centers.

“Being the first point of contact, primary healthcare workers, if properly trained, are able to prevent many other disastrous health problems through early detection, said Alexandre Kalache, chief of the Aging and Life Course Program (ALC) at the WHO.

“An overweight man can easily come down with diabetes if there is no active prevention on his overweight problem. From there, other illnesses like blindnesss and kidney failure can easily follow,” he said.

The project was announced during the seventh global conference of the International Federation on Aging. A clinic in the wealthy city state has been selected as the first test site for the WHO initiative.

“We hope countries will take up the guidelines we (WHO) have established. At the end of the day, this initiative can also be seen as a cost-saving measure to defray the rising healthcare cost that will otherwise be a long-term burden,” said Kalache.