Society

China in need of nursing homes

By Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-10-25 08:12

BEIJING - Meng Xianping registered to get his mother into a local nursing home at the end of 2009, but he and the rest of the family - three generations living under one roof - are still waiting as the matriarch approaches 90.

The nursing home, named Evergreen, said that Meng's mother is not the only one waiting for a place in the home, which has 500 beds: it's had about 2,700 people on its waiting list - since 2008.

Related readings:  Nursing homes get fall festival dumplings  Shanghai's elderly enjoy public, private care  Mental care for the elderly  High suicide rate haunts Chinese elderly

In fact, this phenomenon of finding it hard to locate a bed in an affordable nursing home in Beijing, not to mention elsewhere in China, is not as rare as one might think.

"The nation is suffering from a great shortage of old-age homes," said Yan Qingchun, deputy director of the China National Committee on Aging (CNCA).

Beijing had approximately 90,000 people waiting for a place in a nursing home, at the end of 2009, but there were only 30,000 beds available, according to official statistics.

Meanwhile, the number of people nationwide aged 60 or older amounted to 167 million by 2009. That was 12.5 percent of the population, according to the CNCA.

Among the 167 million elderly people, experts estimated that around 50 percent were living by themselves, while their children sought employment elsewhere.

To make matters worse, nearly 30 million of those old people are disabled or will soon be because of illness or the natural effects of aging and are in need of care, Yan told China Daily.

"For them, a professional nursing home might be the best choice," he said.

The problem is that China has about 40,000 nursing homes with a total of around 2.4 million beds, official statistics show.

And the cost has caused many who are in bad need of care to give up looking.

Evergreen is but one example of the nursing home plight. Its fee of 2,500 yuan ($375) per person per month is about average for such facilities in Beijing, according to Wu Shimin, chief of the city's civil affairs bureau.

And even at that price, "nursing homes are struggling to make ends meet."

Beijing's response has been to look for policies that favor old age care facilities in taxes and other ways. In addition to the traditional government-owned nursing homes, privately-owned ones are being encouraged, Wu said.

Nursing homes now, regardless of whether they are government supported or privately run, are mainly open to anyone who can afford them.

The State-owned ones mainly funded by the government, Yan said, should be public property and should be ready to help the poor with basic care and support.

But there is a great lack of good management and supervision seen in nursing homes across the country, he said. CNCA studies have found that a number of nursing homes in operation are not registered with the government as is required.

Under these conditions, "supervision is almost impossible." Yan has called for better quality and improved services

China had 30,000 people certified to work in old age care, by 2008 - but at least 10 million were needed, according to media reports.