In China, Alzheimer’s Care Nearly Forgotten; A global report cites a shortage of professional care for China’s 9 million Alzheimer’s sufferers

10.17.2013 15:18

In China, Alzheimer’s Care Nearly Forgotten

A global report cites a shortage of professional care for China’s 9 million Alzheimer’s sufferers

By staff reporter Lan Fang

Zhang Rong spent more than seven, torturous years caring for her elderly father while he mentally drifted away. Finally, late last year, her 85-year-old father fell into a deep coma and was hospitalized in intensive care. Zhang later agreed to let doctors remove the tubes that kept her father alive. Two days later, he passed away peacefully. Zhang had watched her father gradually grow more confused, even delusional. He talked about long-dead friends coming over for visits, and memories from decades past so entangled his thinking that he was unable to differentiate between former times and the present.

“You see them deteriorating bit by bit, marching toward death,” said Zhang, a white collar worker in Beijing. “And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”

That gnawing feeling of helplessness is shared by millions of Chinese across the country whose elderly relatives suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, an incurable form of dementia. They have to bear ever-weightier care-giving tasks as their loved ones’ mental faculties slowly diminish.

Only a fraction of these patients receive professional health care in China. About 3,000 nursing home beds are available for dementia sufferers nationwide, according to reports released at an Alzheimer conference in Beijing in September, with even fewer set aside for the nation’s estimated 9.1 million diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

That so few Alzheimer’s patients get the medical attention they need in the world’s most populous country is among the focal points of a report released in September by the British non-profit group Alzheimer’s Disease International. This year’s report for the first time highlighted the activities – and challenges – of ADI’s China branch.

The World Alzheimer Report 2013 said about one-fourth of the world’s 36.5 million dementia sufferers are Chinese, and that that number is rising as the average age in China creeps ever-higher.

China is now home to about 194 million people over age 60, or 22 percent of the world’s seniors. By 2024, that number is expected to top 300 million. And by 2052, one-third of all Chinese citizens are expected to be over age 60.

Worldwide, says the ADI report, another 7.7 million people are diagnosed with dementia every year, which means one new case is diagnosed every four seconds. Moreover, the number of sufferers has been doubling every 20 years, so by 2030 there could be roughly 65.7 million people with the disease globally.

These and other serious statistics have raised even more serious questions about the future of care-giving for China’s dementia and Alzheimer’s patients, according to ADI’s China project director, Hong Li.

Today in China, Hong said, the primary caregivers for more than 70 percent of all dementia patients are spouses, who typically themselves are also up in years.

Spousal caregivers “are already quite old, too,” he said, “and many are becoming unwell themselves.”

Easy to Overlook

Dementia can be marked by memory loss, weak cognition, abnormal thinking and quirky behavior. Gradually, sufferers often lose the ability to function normally.

Research by ADI has found that Alzheimer’s risks rise as a senior citizen grows old. Globally, less than 10 percent of dementia patients are afflicted before age 65. But for those with the disease who are over 85, the morbidity rate can be as high as 48 percent.

Scientists have long sought to understand the causes of Alzheimer’s. They’ve determined that dementia can be linked to degenerative diseases of the nervous system, cerebrovascular disease, traumatic brain injury, tumors and infections. More than 60 percent of all dementia patients have Alzheimer’s.

Medical researchers have also looked for ways to halt or slow dementia’s progress by means of medicine or other treatments. So far, there’s been little progress. The average Alzheimer’s sufferer dies in about 7.1 years.

The first signs of Alzheimer’s are often overlooked or simply blamed on aging. A sufferer first starts forgetting recent events. Gradually, basic communication turns difficult: A sufferer when speaking may find it hard to find the right words.

An early-stage Alzheimer’s patient might get lost even in familiar places. His or her sense of time becomes muddled, as does the sense of direction. Basic household chores may be hard to finish.

Such symptoms may persist for a year or two before the disease enters an intermediate stage, at which point the sufferer becomes even more forgetful and requires help with personal care. At later stages, a sufferer finds it hard to sleep comfortably and can become delusional, even aggressive.

After five years or so, most patients enter the last stage and become completely dependent on their caregivers. They no longer recognize loved ones, nor can they tell what’s happening around them. They even need help with eating.