Home-based care way forward for elderly: Shanghai mayor

CHINA | The Shanghai Daily – 20 January 2014 – Shanghai is to promote home-based care for seniors to tackle the problem of the city’s aging population and the shortage of resources for the elderly, Shanghai Mayor Yang Xiong told the annual session of the Shanghai People’s Congress. “The problem is really urgent for the city government as the percentage of the elderly population is increasing by about 2% every year,” Yang said. At the end of 2012, Shanghai had 3.67 million residents aged over 60, up 5.6% from a year earlier and a quarter of the total population. Care services can’t meet demand, made more acute as 70% of the city’s elderly have chronic diseases and need day care or in-home services, an earlier survey found. There are 620 nursing homes in Shanghai with 100,000 beds – enough for just 3% of the city’s elderly population. Another problem is that many residents cannot afford fees for in-home care or nursing home services as they receive low government subsidies, said Xu Li, a local lawmaker…read more

An article from Media Watch, compiled and annotated by Barry R. Ashpole (Ontario, Canada). More reports can be found at IPCRC.NET