The Retirement & Healthcare Coalition (RHC), a subsidiary of the European, American, Japanese and Korean chambers of commerce, yesterday urged the government to come up with guidelines to aid the full development of a holistic geriatric care industry in the country.

This developed as the RHC formed a grouping of companies that can potentially start providing geriatric care within villages and residential areas.

RHC chairman Henry Schumacher said the group has identified the geriatric care industry as one of the most promising sunrise industries of the country.

“The Philippines has the potential to become the worldwide leader in this industry given that it has a westernized culture, the third biggest English speaking country in the world, and has more than 300,000 nurses that are currently unemployed or not working in their field,” Schumacher said.

“Global ageing is also happening in the Philippines which has currently close to eight million senior citizens living in the country. We cannot close our eyes on this development and we need to come up with services for the country’s ageing population,” he added.

RHC started its operations in 2007 with the goal of assisting the Department of Tourism and the Philippine Retirement Authority in marketing the Philippines as an international retirement destination.

Schumacher said while RHC is still looking at enticing foreign retirees to the Philippines, he also sees an urgent need in developing services for local senior citizens.

According to Schumacher, industrialization and urbanization has changed family structures and how it deals with the needs of its elderly members.

“With more than 10 million Filipinos living abroad and about one million of the younger generation working in the business process outsourcing industry, they have limited time to care for their parents,” he said.

Marc Daubenbuechel, RHC executive director, cited the need to develop a holistic environment for senior citizens, including geriatric medical services, home care and residential care facilities.

RHC is currently working on a geriatric curriculum that will be offered in 2016 to select colleges and universities as a six-month vocational training course.

“With the growing number of seniors and as one of the highest increasing dementia rates in the region, we need specialized care services,” Daubenbuechel said.

To further develop the country’s geriatric care industry, RHC recently formed the Alliance of Residential Care Facilities, which is composed of six residential care facilities from Manila, Iloilo and Tagaytay.

These facilities are in the process of implementing a quality management system to be at par with European standards.

Daubenbuechel said involvement from the national government, local government units and communities is needed to fully develop the country’s geriatric care industry.

Source: Malaya Business Insight