Police have arrested a 30-year-old man for reportedly castrating three inpatients at a nursing home in Heilongjiang Province in northeast China.

The victims of this latest abuse were two bedridden patients aged 53 and 80, who lost one testicle each, as well as a 60-year-old mentally disabled man, who lost both.

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According to state new agency Xinhua, the suspect "tied up the three patients and removed their private parts with a dull razor."

Upon investigation, the victims identified the suspect as a worker of the nursing home.

Contrary to the claim of the victims and their families, a staff from the nursing home denies that the perpetrator is a colleague. Instead, the staff claims that the suspect is one of the mentally-ill patients housed in the nursing home.

No details regarding the identity and motive of the suspect have been released by the investigators of the case.

In recent years, China has been struggling with problems concerning the lack of millions of nursing home employees to care for the country's growing elderly population.

Experts observed that factors affecting this sector include the heavy workload, low pay, and social stigma attached to employees working for this group.

A report from China Philanthropy Research Institute, an affiliate of Beijing Normal University, revealed that the country only has 300,000 caregivers to attend to approximately 2.6 million people living in 41, 000 nursing homes nationwide.

"Such shortage is severe," the report adds. Furthermore, most of the caregivers lack the formal qualifications.

To address these concerns, the government has provided training programs for caregivers. This effort is one of the responses initiated to provide solutions to the problems.

Vocational Skills Identification Guidance Center deputy director Yang Genlai says that the government has allocated additional budget to train at least six million caregivers by the end of 2020.

Given these responses from the government, Guo Ping, an assistant research fellow at the China Research Center on Aging, expressed confidence that this situation will be fixed soon.

TagsNursing home, castrate, Heilongjiang Province