About five lakh elderly people, a majority of them women, go missing every year in China due to inadequate medicare and migration of their children to cities, according to a survey released on Sunday.
The survey released by the Zhongmin Social Assistance Institute and a leading news platform Toutiao said, 1,370 senior citizens go missing every day with an average age of 76.
Women account for 58 per cent of the total, it said.
The survey noted that many of the missing suffer from mental illness, with 72 per cent suffering from some form of memory impairment and 25 per cent diagnosed with dementia, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
According to the survey, many cases are related to poverty and the inadequate care provided by family members as they migrate to large cities in search of higher wages.
The survey calls for the establishment of a national network to record and find missing people, and recommends that aid centres arrange specialist personnel to look for missing persons.
It also suggests that local governments in areas with large population outflows cooperate with social groups to assess the living conditions of seniors citizens left at home, and explore effective methods to prevent such citizens from going missing.
China has been facing major demographic crisis due to massive increase in aged people due to three decades old one child policy.