Two moments in my family showed me how easily older people are quietly written off — and why the new UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons matters.

Welcome to OOPS, my occasional reflections on the business of getting older — what catches me by surprise, what makes me think, and what seems to matter more with each passing year.

Uncle Oliver was 85 when he received a letter from his GP.

It was the start of the Covid pandemic, and the letter informed him that if he caught Covid he would not be actively treated because of his age.

His family were shocked and angry. But Uncle Oliver would not let us challenge the decision.

“He’s right,” he said. “I’m old. It’s the young ones who deserve treatment first.”

My mum was 89 when she broke her leg. I was with her in hospital when we overheard two nurses talking outside her room.

“Well she is 88. We can limit the physio she gets. At her age she doesn’t need to get around too much.”

I was furious on my mum’s behalf. Those nurses didn’t see the still-active volunteer, wise mum, loving grandma and great-grandma. They saw a number — and quietly wrote her off.

The tragic thing was that mum agreed with them.

“Physios are expensive, love.”

In mum’s case we had a good outcome because — against her wishes — I challenged the nurses, spoke to the Sister and the doctors, and made sure she got the physiotherapy she needed to walk again.

I was thinking about Uncle Oliver and mum when I read about the soon-to-be-agreed UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons.

It has been a long time coming. For years people argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights already protected older people. But the slow, insidious nature of age discrimination has only gradually been recognised.

Across the world, ageism remains one of the most socially acceptable forms of prejudice.

Negative stereotypes of old age fill the media. People who would be horrified to be called racist or misogynistic happily nod along to ageist assumptions. Even the language used by policymakers reveals it: “a tsunami of need.” “Frail and dependent older people.”

“Too many older people have been persuaded that their rights shrink as they grow older.”

That is why this Convention matters.

Among other things, it will make clear that access to healthcare cannot be narrowed simply because of someone’s date of birth. With those rights in place, that GP could never have written a letter denying Uncle Oliver treatment because of his age. And people in my mum’s position — who don’t have a furious daughter to advocate for them — would still get the rehabilitation they need to regain their independence.

The Convention won’t solve everything. Ageism is so deeply embedded that many older people, like Uncle Oliver and my mum, have come to believe their rights somehow shrink as they grow older.

We have accepted for far too long the idea that growing older somehow makes a person worth less.

WIGO exists to change that.