A medical worker gives check-up to an elderly (Photo: VNA)HCM City (VNS/VNA) - An ageing population is posing mountingchallenges to providing care for elderly people in Vietnam. However, in acountry where most families look after old parents in their own homes, the ideaof a ‘nursing home’ or geriatric centre remains an alien concept.
Ho Chi Minh, the bustling economic centre of Vietnam, is not an exemption to therule, leading to a lack of quality geriatric care facilities for those most inneed.
Overcoming prejudice
Thanh Tam had married and lived away from her parents for more than 20 years,however, when her father broke his legs, she decided to return home to District10 to take care of him.
At first, her father remained in good health and spirits, living happily withhis offspring. However, in the last three years, his health started to visiblydecline while Tam’s workload increased. She hired helpers to take some of theburden of caring for her father, but one by one, they stopped working afterjust two or three months each.
Left with little choice, Tam was forced to send her father to a nursing home.It was not an easy decision.
Minh Duong, a resident of District 3, is facing a similar predicament, and islooking for a suitable nursing home for her aunt. Duong’s aunt has been livingalone for several years after her sole son passed away in an accident, butrecently her health began to deteriorate and she expressed a desire to live ina nursing home – which will provide both daily care and constant companionshipfrom other elderly residents.
In Vietnam, where the idea of ‘tu dai dong duong’ – literally translated asfour generations living under the same roof – remains not just a common sayingbut a ‘dogma’ to live by, the sending of grandparents or elderly relatives tonursing homes could be seen as irresponsible, a failure to perform filial duty,or a lack of respect for elders. However, in recent years, especially in urbanareas, it’s no longer as outrageous a decision as before and is starting to beviewed more acceptingly.
Real life cases show that, once the psychological issues of having to liveapart from their children or grandchildren have been overcome, the quality oflife for elderly people in nursing homes might actually see unexpectedimprovements.
Thanh Tam said after a year in the nursing home, when things started to settlefor her father, his health – both physical and mental – has been growing muchmore stable, reassuring her that she has made the right, albeit difficult,choice and provided her with mental support to ward off others’ objections.
Supply shortage
According to Trinh Thi Hien, an expert from the HCM City Institute forDevelopment Studies, the trend of sending elderly people to nursing homes willcontinue to grow due to the rapidly ageing population. People above 60 yearsold currently account for 10 percent of the total population, and this isexpected to rise to 17 percent by 2030, translating to 16.5 million people.
[Video: Health care for elderly a growing concern in Vietnam]
“Ceding the care of their parents to nursing homes does not mean entirelyrelinquishing their filial duties, and society needs to be more open-mindedabout this issue,” Hien said.
However, the number of nursing homes in the city remains too low, according to ChauMinh Ty, head of HCM City’s Association of the Elderly.
Currently, there are three forms of nursing homes in the city. First, publicnursing homes, which are only capable of accommodating around 2,000 people,with the largest one being Thanh Loc nursing home for disabled elders inDistrict 12 currently providing care for 300 people. The second form of nursinghomes are the nine provided by religious and charity organisations, however,they are mostly small and their operations depend entirely on donations.
The third type are private nursing homes, most notably the Kinh Dong centre andBinh My home in Cu Chi district, however, due to the high costs associated withbetter facilities and services, there are not many residents in these centres.
“Socialisation” of nursing homes
While the state budget allocation for geriatric care remains limited, priorityis placed on elders without relatives, disabled people, or poor ones. In orderto cater to elderly people from other walks of life in society, encouragingprivate investment into geriatric care is a necessity, according to Trinh Thi Hien.
As the first private nursing home in HCM City, Ba Thuong centre opened in 2007and aimed to achieve “European standards” with green spaces, thorough services,and decent infrastructure. However, due to its high costs, for a long time,only overseas Vietnamese and a few high-income families sought their services,so the centre could barely stay afloat. Later, it changed its name to Kinh Dongresort village, opening up more services to include even short-term andlong-term tourists, but the business still didn’t see any sign of improvements.
A late successor to the Kinh Dong resort, but due to its application of nursinghome standards in Japan – the country whose ratio of elderly population isthought to eclipse all other countries – and a more affordable price, Binh My nursingcentre in Cu Chi district is the only private nursing home still operational inHCM City. At the moment, the centre is taking care of 200 seniors for a monthlycost of around 8 million VND (350 USD) each.
Bui Anh Trung, director of the nursing home, said it also received thosesuffering from complete paralysis or terminal diseases. "Acceptance ofthese ill elderly persons is really risky as the home faces potential lawsuitsfrom any incident during their stay here, but we can’t turn away thesecustomers, or there’s no one else [to take care of them],” Trung said.
Due to high investment and the high risk nature of the service, there was atime when several private nursing homes sprouted up only to close down beforelong.
Offering tax incentives and slashing land lease costs for private nursing homeprojects could be the first step to kickstart the development of private care. BuiAnh Trung said at the moment, private nursing homes were not receiving any formof encouragement policies from the government. He also wanted the government todesign ‘protection mechanisms’ for private nursing centres since this is “ahigh risk business.”
Chau Minh Ty said socialisation of geriatric care could open up many facilitieswith each one catering to the needs of a group of elderly people with differentneeds. For example, there would be nursing homes for those that are really illand can’t look after themselves. There would be also facilities for healthyresidents, who can attend part-time nursing homes. These could offer the chanceto take part in sports and social activities with other seniors, and be lookedafter during the daytime while returning home at night.-VNA
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