2024 RT Amination Banner.gif

China Daily

Focus> In-Depth China> Content
Friday, April 03, 2020, 11:27
Communities for seniors playing their part
By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai
Friday, April 03, 2020, 11:27 By Zhou Wenting in Shanghai

Important venues help curb outbreak

A Starcastle community home in Shanghai has extended its dining hours and limited the number eating at the same time to ensure people keep a safe distance from each other. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

After a snowfall in Beijing earlier this year, Li Qiming, 73, and his wife were taking pictures in a garden.

Li stopped to pick up a cobblestone and took it back to their apartment, where he and his wife painted an image of Maitreya-regarded as a future Buddha of this world-on the stone.

They used the painting, which was completed on March 2, to send their best wishes to people in Wuhan, Hubei province, where the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak first emerged.

The couple live in a community built especially for senior citizens. Nationwide, more than 40,000 institutions and communities provide care for seniors. Some 3 percent of such residents in major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, live in these communities.

Shi Xiaoming, a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference on March 2, "Institutions that care for senior citizens are extremely important venues in curbing the spread of the outbreak."

Institutions and communities for seniors provide a range of services through caregivers and other staff members.

Shi said many elderly people have to make frequent hospital visits to be treated for various ailments.

In Beijing, Li, a former government official, said it is much better for him and his wife to stay in such a community rather than in a residential neighborhood.

"Most residential neighborhoods have closed their doors to outsiders. Life can be inconvenient and even hard for elderly people living on their own. But here, life is stable," he said.

Two guidelines have been published by the National Health Commission on how institutions for the elderly should prevent the virus spreading-the first on Jan 28 and an updated version on Feb 7. Both versions called for the strictest measures to be taken to control access to these institutions and to safeguard the health of senior citizens and workers.

Early last month, civil affairs bureaus in Beijing and Shanghai reiterated that all care facilities for the elderly must continue with a strict management policy and the "five suspends"-suspending visits by family members, food brought in by families, entry by couriers and food delivery riders, recruiting employees, and admitting new residents.

Seniors play a game at a community for the elderly in Tianjin. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Jiang Rui, deputy director of the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau, said: "We must carry out the strictest management, although the overall situation in Shanghai has improved. Meanwhile, life for the elderly should be enriched in various ways, such as chatting with family members on the internet and by joining activities at the facilities."

There are more than 670 such facilities in Beijing and 730 in Shanghai-a city with one of the largest aging populations nationwide. As of December, 2018, there were 5.03 million permanent residents age 60 and older in the municipality, accounting for just over 34 percent of its total population. The corresponding national proportion was nearly 18 percent.

For managers of facilities for seniors, the priority is disinfection and preventing the spread of the virus from inside and outside such communities.

Wang Yuke, president of Fosun Integrated Care Group and of Starcastle elderly communities, said, "We initiated emergency measures to prevent the elderly contracting upper respiratory tract infections, and implemented corresponding disinfection and quarantine measures at our facilities on Jan 15, even before the lockdown was enforced in Wuhan." Li, the former government official, and his wife live in a Starcastle community.

Wang's communities have been graded with different colors-red, orange, yellow and green-to denote their levels of infection risk. The grades also relate to different sterilization and prevention measures.

For example, for residential areas marked green, caregivers only need to wear disposable masks and gloves, while quarantine rooms for seniors running a fever are marked red, meaning that workers must wear protective medical suits and N95 face masks, she said.

Wang Xiaohui, vice-president of Starcastle, said that on learning about the outbreak, the group worked quickly to distribute protective gear, handbooks on the disease and on personal hygiene measures for all seniors and caregivers.

Xie Gaoyang, 89, who lives at a Starcastle community in Shanghai with his wife, said caregivers explained in detail how residents should wash their hands thoroughly, along with the correct way to wear a face mask.

Lu Zhifang, a resident of the Langongguan Nursing Home in Shanghai's Xuhui district, said the facility raced against time to buy protective supplies for the elderly through various channels.

"We have received packages in different languages, including Japanese, Korean and English, that contain face masks," the 74-yearold woman said.

Croquet is played by residents at a community for the elderly in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)

Zhang Yu, who manages the home, said three vans are being used to enable caregivers to get to work-instead of having to take public transportation-to minimize the risk of infection.

Many communities for the elderly said that due to the outbreak they have not been able to organize outings, shopping trips and visits to museums as usual, but are moving various activities online to keep community life enjoyable.

One community in Tieshan Temple Forest Park, Jiangsu province, said it is offering online classes, including those on health science, singing, calligraphy and board games.

Hua Yan, assistant to the general manager at Nanjing Jinling Group Holdings, the main investor in the project, which is home to about 600 seniors, said, "In the singing class, several seniors jointly wrote a song to encourage people in Wuhan and those sent to the city from across the country to provide support."

Starcastle said each online activity, including a sign language class, karaoke competition and calligraphy-writing contest attracted dozens of seniors.

In February, a Starcastle community in Shanghai also organized an online auction, where some 20 pieces of art, handicraft and calligraphy donated by the seniors were bought by netizens. The auction raised 91,800 yuan (US$13,200) to buy medical supplies for Wuhan.

An 80-year-old former doctor, surnamed Zhu, donated a work of calligraphy for the auction. "I am thankful that I could make a tiny contribution to support the medical teams dispatched from around the country to support the epicenter. Those doctors and nurses are extraordinary heroes," she said.

Dong Yan, chairman and CEO of Fosun Integrated Care Group, said: "Seniors have been adapting well to the internet. The elderly-care industry has to embrace this new trend."

Wang Xiaohui, the Starcastle vice-president, said seniors living at its facilities are being encouraged to dine at canteens, instead of having meals delivered to their rooms.

"We have extended the dining hours, rearranged the canteens and limited the number of people who can eat at the same time, to ensure the seniors keep a safe distance from each other," she said.

Starcastle has also organized movies, and some sports-including jogging and table tennis-for seniors at its communities, which have had no infections.

It has also summarized its experience of curbing the spread of the virus and sent related documents to the four largest elderly-care community chains in the United States, in return for the knowledge they offered on building such care facilities in China eight years ago.

zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn


Share this story

CHINA DAILY
HONG KONG NEWS
OPEN
Please click in the upper right corner to open it in your browser !