Family last safety net in dementia care
As Alzheimer's cases rise in China, loved ones shoulder burden amid limited institutional support and deep-rooted expectations of filial duty. Wei Wangyu reports.
At six o'clock each morning, Wei Qiang helps his 80-year-old mother sit up in bed. His mother, once known for her sharp memory, now stares blankly as Wei adjusts her pillow, wipes her mouth, and whispers reminders to eat slowly and swallow. This routine of feeding, bathing and turning her at night to prevent bed sores repeats every day without a nurse on duty or a shift change.
"Alzheimer's disease has transformed our home into a full-time care unit, one run almost entirely by ourselves," Wei said.
Wei's struggle is the face of mounting national pressure. According to the China Alzheimer's Disease Report 2024, which was organized by Renji Hospital of Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine and participated in by a number of medical institutions in China, the current number of patients living with Alzheimer's and other dementias in China is nearly 17 million.
As the country ages rapidly, formal care options remain limited, uneven, or culturally stigmatized. In practice, families — most often consisting of adult children or elderly spouses — have become the front-line providers of long-term dementia care, shouldering medical decisions, emotional labor and moral responsibility largely on their own.
In China, Alzheimer's care is "less a medical service than a family obligation shaped by filial ethics, constrained by scarce institutional support and intensified by the pressure to do everything possible", Wei said.
