Adult children and other family members are increasingly abandoning their 60-years-plus elders who have been hospitalized, according to reporters Lim Wey Wen and Yuen Meikeng writing in The Star, on October 8, 2012. Earlier in 2011, some 200 seniors in this Malaysian city were left behind. Nearly all came from poor families. Six months into 2012, over 250 older people had been left in the hospital following their discharge. NGOs that run public shelters had already filled their beds earlier in the year.
Why is this happening? Poverty in families and in public funding for older people underlies this terrible situation. In the most recent data collected in 2004, about 675,000 older parents received no funding from their children.
What is your situation? Would your adult children or other family members help you financially if your resources were exhausted? Please comment.
Thanks, Susanne Paul for Global Action on Aging
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