Malaysia running out of caregivers for old people
Country has around 60 geriatricians serving the entire nation — one for every 65,000 older Malaysians, raising alarm
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (MNTV) — Malaysia is facing a slow-motion crisis in elderly care that is already beyond the capacity of existing systems — and experts warn that the country is running out of time to avert a demographic catastrophe.
The numbers are stark. Malaysia currently has around 60 geriatricians — doctors specialising in the care of older people — to serve a population of 3.9 million citizens aged 60 and above.
That works out to roughly one specialist for every 65,000 elderly Malaysians. The Ministry of Health’s own benchmark calls for one geriatrician per 10,000 older patients. Analysis by the SEDAR Institute, drawing on parliamentary health data, estimates that Malaysia will need at least 549 geriatricians by 2030 to meet demand. At the current training rate of approximately eight new geriatricians per year, that target is not remotely achievable.
“We are nowhere close,” wrote analyst Rashidi Yahya in a piece published by Code Blue. “And at our current training output of roughly 8 geriatricians annually, we will not get there in time.”
The demographic backdrop makes the situation even more urgent. In 2024, Malaysians aged 60 and above made up 11.6 percent of the population, more than double the share they represented in 1970.
By 2030, that figure is projected to cross 15 percent — the threshold at which a country is classified as an aged society. By 2056, Malaysia is expected to reach super-aged status.
The 13th Malaysia Plan sets a target of growing the trained care workforce from 43,000 to 50,000 by 2030, but analysts point out that this expansion is woefully insufficient relative to the scale of the elderly population it must serve.
The consequences of inaction are already visible. Dementia cases are going undiagnosed or being written off as ordinary ageing, because there are simply not enough trained professionals to identify and treat them.
A study published in BMC Geriatrics in 2025 estimated that between 202,000 and 216,000 older Malaysians were living with Alzheimer’s dementia in 2022, at an economic cost approaching 0.5 percent of GDP.
Malaysia’s Research Institute on Ageing projects that total dementia cases will reach 668,000 by 2050.
The international comparison offers little comfort. Japan, which introduced a mandatory long-term care insurance system in 2000 and has spent decades preparing for its ageing population, is still staring down a shortfall of 300,000 care workers.
“We are trying to solve in five years what Japan could not solve in 25,” Yahya wrote.
Experts say what Malaysia urgently needs is a long-term care insurance framework that distributes financial risk across the population and builds a sustainable funding base — one that must be constructed now, before the full force of demographic change arrives, rather than in response to a crisis already in progress.
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