Charleston, W.Va. Elderly people throughout the world are being left on their own in rural communities as the younger population leaves in search of big-city opportunities-and the result, says The Shepherdstown Report on the Implications of Rural Aging, is a lack of health care and support services for the aged.

"One of the group's foremost conclusions was the critical importance of the economic and social implications of an increasingly aged global population that lives primarily in rural and remote areas," said Robert D'Alessandri, M.D., conference chair and vice president for health sciences at West Virginia University. Among the difficulties the group pointed out were inadequacies in health care, access to services and intergenerational relations.

According to the report, which was written by an international team of experts assembled by the university's Center on Aging and the United Nations Programme on Ageing, the majority of the world's elderly-60 percent-live in rural and remote areas.