Professional care center for seniors with Alzheimer's finishes construction

Construction of the city’s first institute that offers professional care for elders with Alzheimer’s was completed on Friday in the Pudong New Area.

The institute, at the Shanghai International Medical Center, was built by the hospital, Australian aged care group Provectus Care and property developer Greenland Hong Kong.

It offers professional care to elders with cognitive diseases, especially Alzheimer’s.

Currently, China lacks institutes or medical professionals to take care of elders with cognitive diseases. As 80 percent of the aging patients can’t express themselves, they will become aggressive. Some hospitals and elder-care institutes just feed them pills or tie them to the bed to make them quiet.

“It makes them lose their dignity,” said Wang Xuling, executive director of Greenland Hong Kong. “Now, there’s no medicine that can cure people with Alzheimer’s. What we can do is just to offer professional care to slow down the progression of dementia.”

It is estimated that Shanghai has 200,000 senior people with Alzheimer’s.