Senior Wellness Center
By 2025, there will be nearly 15 million elderly people living in Thailand. Chiang Mai province alone will see a 20% increase in its number of the elderly.
To address this growing concern, Chiang Mai University has been donated a seven rai piece of land by the Treasury Department by the Ping River, on which it will build a Senior Wellness Center aimed at supporting this burgeoning segment of the population.
Chiang Mai University is anticipating this growth in numbers of the elderly by putting in place strategies to not just support the needs of the elderly, but to create programs and initiatives to help delay the decline of the elderly, so that they can have a better and healthier quality of life for as long as possible. With innovations in terms of food science and health undergoing research and development, the wellness center aims to offer a support ecosystem for up to 60,000 elderly people per year.
There will be two separate targeted groups; the elderly and fit and the elderly and infirm, each with its own strategy and infrastructure. The main aim, however, is to reduce the numbers in the latter group through early promotion of various health and fitness programs.
The wellness center will be open to all retirement aged people who can come and go as they please and join in a number of programs and activities on offer. With the aim of offering services to improve the quality of life in terms of the physical, the mental and the emotional, the center aims to open its welcoming doors by the end of 2021 or early 2022.
“The elderly will continue to age, it is natural,” said Professor Pongruk Sribanditmongkol, M.D., Ph.D. Vice President of Chiang Mai University who is leading the charge on this project. “But before they reach the end of their lives, we need to help them to be as healthy as possible and enjoy a quality of life as long as possible. Professor Pongruk went on to explain that Chiang Mai University has all the tools and knowledge to help support this aim. The university, he said, has physicians, nurses, medical technicians, pharmacists, dentists, engineers, architects, agricultural experts and nutritionists, all of whom can be called upon to work together to create a world class wellness center for the elderly. He went on to cite the comprehensive and large amounts of research done in many fields by various university researchers to support the project.
“Why do this now?” he asked rhetorically. “This project is like a large jigsaw puzzle with many pieces. Just like our university’s large amounts of resources, which will be drawn upon for the sake of helping the aging population of our society. Many elderly people have dentistry problems, for instance. If an elderly person still has 16 teeth, or eight pairs of teeth, then they are still considered to be in good health, whether they are 70, 80 or 90 years old. To be able to chew food is very important at that age. To that end, we have an entire team of geriatric dentists who can dedicate themselves to helping prolong the ability to eat in the elderly. The next piece of the jigsaw, for instance, are the architects who can work alongside the engineers to use digital technology, or agricultural technology to, for instance, develop vegetables which require less chewing. They can perhaps develop vegetables with high nutrition which is easier to digest.”
A symbolic ‘age regression gate’ will be the entry way into the wellness center which will then lead to various zones such as the training zone, the health check up zone, the physical therapy zone, the water therapy zone, the in patient zone, the garden zone with outdoors exercise equipment, the leisure zone, etc. There will also be a food hall serving healthy food from quality produce.
The centers aims to have at least 80% of their personnel aged over 60, giving job opportunities to the elderly so that they can feel helpful even after retirement. The aim is to help extend the quality of life for over 60,000 people per year, and offering a space for the elderly to meet one another and feel less isolated and lonely.
According to Professor Pongruk the government has an ambition to see 7,000 wellness centers open across Thailand, most of which will be built and operated by local administrative bodies. So far, he said, fewer than 1,000 have been built.
“Instead of thousands of such centers opening up with little real knowledge or resources, Chiang Mai University is in a unique position to offer up a model from which other centers can emulate,” explained Professor Pongruk. “If anywhere in Thailand wants to open a senior wellness center, all they will have to do is come to look at our model; how to design and build? What resources are needed? Our concept is that instead of competing, we work together. One elderly patient may need an operation as well as physical therapy and dentistry, we can offer all these channels in one place.”
The center aims to support the future growth of Thailand’s elderly, offering up a model from which others across the nation can emulate.