Ip So-hing, 72, lives in her own flat in Sham Shui Po in Hong Kong. Her husband passed away more than 10 years ago, and she has no children. She does not receive social security assistance from the government, and lives on her own savings accumulated when she was a garment factory worker.

Since she does not have any relatives except for her late husband's younger brother, whom she does not see regularly, she only caught the attention of volunteers from the Hong Kong Society for Community Organization (SOCO) when she walked past their information booth in the street.

"I don't have much activities or spend much because I have to pay for everything," Ip said.

SOCO's community organizer, Fok Tin-man, said they would set up information booths in public areas so as to search for needy elderly and distribute information to them.

In fact, Ip was just one of the about 100,000 elderly people living alone in Hong Kong, leaving them vulnerable to problems such as a lack of resources and services and financial problems.

Ip, for instance, said maintenance costs are high for her apartment of about 400 square feet inside a building more than 20 years old. Since she is a vegetarian and has no income, her meal often only includes vegetables and bean curd.

She does not want to lease one of her rooms in exchange for income because she said "many people will bully an elderly like me."

What's more, though she has joint problems and leg pain, she does not visit the doctor because it would cost money.

As for her blurring vision, she said she has been waiting in line for government medical services for more than two years.

A spokesperson for the Health, Welfare and Food Bureau said the government has been encouraging families and society to love the elderly so that they could lead an active live.

Since 1998, the government has sponsored support teams for senior citizens, which involves volunteers calling and visiting them to give them personal assistance and emotional support. Since last September, 41 teams and almost 60,000 elderly, half of them living alone, have been served.

Services such as home cleaning and lunch box delivery are also offered, and more than 20,000 elderly have benefited from them, according to the spokesperson.

Furthermore, the government has subsidized elderly people with financial needs to install safety bells, in which service providers would send their warm greetings to the seniors by telephone.

About 53,000 elderly are currently subscribers of the service, including a large number of those living alone. On top of that, the government has also provided recreational activities for them through more than 200 government-funded centers for the elderly.

Despite these efforts, there do not seem to be enough resources for the hundreds of thousands of elderly people in need.

Alex Kwan, associate head of the Department of Applied Social Studies at the City University of Hong Kong, thought this was an imminent problem for society.

The most urgent aspect that required the government's attention was medical services, he said. "There are at least 48 types of insurance that costs at least HK $60,000 every year," he said. "If you were over the age of 60, it would be even more expensive. For those without social security, medical expenses could use up their own resources." Government figures indicated that more than 70 of the elderly have chronic diseases such as hypertension and arthritis.

"The previous policy address mentioned the issue briefly, but it was not enough," he said.

"Now, every one out of six people was a senior citizen, but by 2025 the number would become one out of every four."

As the population ages, the lack of homes for the elderly would be one of the many emerging problems.

"The current wait for a space in such institutions is two to three years," he said. "With more elderly, the situation will become impossible.

"Many years ago we did not have enough schools, so schools were divided into am and pm sections," he recalled, "What can we do now?"

Although there were 700 nursing homes in the city, he wondered what would happen to the rest of the one million senior citizens.

Although he regarded activity centers for seniors as something useful, he said it has limitations.

"They can meet and talk to people instead of staying home and thinking of negative things," he said.

However, he admitted that visitors of such centers were already the "relatively active ones," and it would be very hard to reach out to those who do not get involved in community activities.

In addition, seniors of different ages have different needs. The lack of resources makes it hard to serve all of them, he said.

He believed that about 15 to 20 of elderly people have financial needs. "You can tell there is something wrong when we see so many senior citizens fighting for cardboard boxes in the streets," he said.

(China Daily February 9, 2006)