Page 16 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
January 6, 2014
Some with Alzheimer’s find care in far-off nations
AFFORDABLE CARE. Margrit, left, an Alzhei-
mer’s patient from Switzerland, walks with a Thai care-
taker during a tour at a Buddhist temple in Chiang Mai
province, northern Thailand. Relatives in western na-
tions are increasingly confronting a dilemma as the
number of Alzheimer’s patients and costs rise, and
the supply of qualified nurses and facilities struggles
to keep up. Faraway countries are offering cheaper,
and to some minds better, care for those suffering
from the irreversible loss of memory. (AP Photo/
Apichart Weerawong)
By Denis D. Gray
The Associated Press
C
HIANG MAI, Thailand — Resi-
dents of a facility for people with
Alzheimer’s disease toss around a
yellow ball and laugh under a cascade with
their caregivers, in a swimming pool
ringed by palm trees and wind chimes.
Susanna Kuratli, once a painter of delicate
oils, swims a lap and smiles.
Watching is her husband, Ulrich, who
has a heart-rending decision: to leave his
wife of 41 years in the facility 5,600 miles
from home, or to bring her back to
Switzerland.
Their homeland treats the elderly as
well as any nation on earth, but Ulrich
Kuratli says the care in northern Thailand
is not only less expensive, but more
personal. In Switzerland, “You have a cold,
old lady who gives you pills and tells you to
go to bed,” he says.
Kuratli and his family have given
themselves six months to decide while the
retired software developer lives alongside
his 65-year-old wife in Baan Kamlangchay
— “Home for Care from the Heart.”
Patients live in individual houses within a
Thai community, are taken to local
markets, temples, and restaurants, and
receive personal around-the-clock care.
The monthly $3,800 cost is a third of what
basic institutional care would come to in
Switzerland.
Kuratli is not yet sure how he’ll care for
Susanna, who used to produce a popular
annual calendar of her paintings. But he’s
leaning toward keeping her in Thailand.
“Sometimes I am jealous. My wife won’t
take my hand, but when her Thai
caregiver takes it, she is calm. She seems
to be happy,” he says. “When she sees me
she starts to cry. Maybe she remembers
how we were and understands, but can no
longer find the words.”
Relatives in western nations are in-
creasingly confronting Kuratli’s dilemma
as the number of Alzheimer’s patients and
costs rise, and the supply of qualified
nurses and facilities struggles to keep up.
Faraway countries are offering cheaper,
and to some minds better, care for those
suffering from the irreversible loss of
memory.
The nascent trend is unnerving to some
experts who say uprooting people with
Alzheimer’s will add to their sense of
displacement and anxiety, though others
say quality of care is more important than
location. There’s also some general uneasi-
ness over the idea of sending ailing elderly
people abroad: The German press has
branded it “gerontological colonialism.”
Germany is already sending several
thousand sufferers, as well as the aged and
otherwise ill, to Eastern Europe, Spain,
Greece, and Ukraine. Patients are even
moving from Switzerland, which was
ranked No. 1 in healthcare for the elderly
this year in an index compiled by the
elderly advocacy group HelpAge Inter-
national and the U.N. Population Fund.
The Philippines is offering Americans
care for $1,500 to $3,500 a month, well
below U.S. rates. About 100 Americans are
currently seeking care in the Philippines,
says J.J. Reyes, who is planning a
retirement community near Manila.
Facilities in Thailand also are preparing
to attract more Alzheimer’s sufferers. In
Chiang Mai, a pleasant city ringed by
mountains, Baan Kamlangchay will be
followed by a $10-million, holiday-like
home scheduled to open before mid-2014.
Also on the way is a small Alzheimer’s unit
within a retirement community set on the
grounds of a former four-star resort.
The U.K.-based Alzheimer’s Disease
International says there are more than 44
million Alzheimer’s patients globally, and
the figure is projected to triple to 135
million by 2050.
A number of European countries have
generous national health insurance, but
these generally do not cover treatment
abroad.
Kuratli
says
the
Swiss
government would cover two-thirds of the
bill for his wife’s care if she stays in
Switzerland, but since high-end private
clinics there can cost $15,000 or more per
month, he could still end up paying more
there than he would in Thailand.
Baan Kamlangchay was established by
Martin Woodtli, a Swiss who spent four
years in Thailand with the aid group
Doctors Without Borders before returning
home to care for his Alzheimer’s-diagnosed
mother.
He brought his mother to Chiang Mai,
where she became the home’s first “guest.”
Woodtli never uses the word “patient.”
Over the next 10 years, the 52-year-old
psychologist and social worker purchased
or rented eight two-story houses where 13
Swiss and German patients now reside.
On most afternoons, the group gathers
at a private, walled park to swim, snack,
and relax on deck chairs. Regular outside
activities are organized because Woodtli
believes these stimuli may help delay
degeneration.
He says his guests “cannot explain it,
but I think they feel part of a family, a
community, and that is very important.”
Sabine Jansen, head of Germany’s
Alzheimer Society, says that while some
with Alzheimer’s may adjust to an alien
place, most find it difficult because they
live in a world of earlier memories.
“They are better oriented in their own
living places and communities,” she says.
“Friends, family members, neighbors can
visit them. Also because of language and
cultural reasons, it is best for most to stay
in their home country.”
Angela Lunde of the U.S.-based Mayo
Clinic says that generally the afflicted do
better in a familiar environment, but over
time, even those with advanced stages of
the disease can adjust well. “I think a
positive transition has less to do with the
move itself and more with the way in
which the staff and new environment
accommodates the person living with
dementia,” she says.
Woodtli says people who have travelled
widely and are accustomed to change can
probably adapt.
“One of our guests sometimes wakes up
in the morning and says, ‘Where am I?’ But
she would do the same if she was in a care
center in Switzerland,” he says. “One guest
thinks she is in a schoolhouse at Lake
Lucerne.”
At the swimming pool, Madeleine
Buchmeier snaps photos and laughs as she
watches a caregiver take her smiling
husband’s hands to twirl around together
in a dance out of childhood.
“It’s a miracle,” she says. Geri used to
bang his head against the walls of a care
facility in Switzerland, she says, “as if he
wanted to do something, get some-
where.”
He would sink when entering water. In
the three weeks since they arrived, he has
calmed down and can swim again, all while
his medicine is being sharply reduced.
Like Kuratli, Buchmeier is deciding
whether her 64-year-old husband, a
former Ford Motor Co. employee, should
stay or go back to Switzerland.
Nearby, Manfred Schlaupitz, a former
Daimler-Benz engineer in his 70s, lies
back in a deck chair, cradling a stuffed toy
lamb. His caregiver, Kanokkan Tasa, sits
on the grass beside him, gently massaging
his legs and tickling his chin. She has been
with him for six years.
“If you think of it as a job, it’s very
difficult,” she says, “but if it comes from the
heart, it is easy.”
Like a number of Alzheimer’s victims,
Schlaupitz responds well to music.
Sometimes they sing one of his favorite
songs: “Yesterday.”
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