Extra beds, care centers planned for seniors

Adding another 5,000 beds to senior homes and creating an additional 20 senior day care centers this year are among Shanghai's plans to better accommodate its growing aging population, a demographic expected to account for a nearly third of the city's entire population by 2015, local civil affairs authorities said Wednesday.

The extra beds and day care centers will increase the city's count to a total of 110,541 beds at senior homes and 346 day care centers for seniors and allow the city to support roughly 3.3 percent of the senior population by the end of the year.

Currently, the city's existing beds, care centers and meal delivery service centers for seniors cover about 3 percent of the elderly population, according to the latest figure from last year given by authorities Wednesday.

The new plans to tackle how to care for the city's seniors also includes establishing 40 community centers for seniors with a disability, which is expected to serve some 270,000 elders who live at home and need help, said Ma Yili, director of the city's civil affairs bureau.

As the price of the land continues to rise, the family unit in the city is becoming increasingly smaller and more elders are living by themselves, or turning to senior homes for support in the last stages of their lives, according to Ren Yuan, a demography expert from the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University.

It is a trend that is also causing big headaches for the city in the way of development as the city needs to account for its aging demographic, which is already 3.31 million people above the age of 60 strong, or roughly 23 percent of its population.

The elderly group is predicted to swell to 30 percent of the city's makeup to 4.3 million people within the next three years - when the country promises to provide at least 30 beds in nursing homes and community care centers to support every 1,000 seniors. The national average currently met is 18 beds for every 1,000 seniors, according to figures released by authorities Wednesday.

But demography expert Ren said that the shortage of beds at senior homes is a serious problem for Shanghai.

"The city's current beds are far from meeting the huge demand," he told the Global Times Wednesday, but could not provide an estimate on the city's current bed count, nor was the figure provided by authorities Wednesday. "It's a big problem and one that should be dealt with before too late."

Ren advised local authorities to encourage private capital investors to join the senior home care service industry. The move would help to create quality care and competitive prices, he said, as each of the city's bed costs at least 140,000 yuan by conservative calculations.