BEIJING, May 23 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities have pledged to further improve the country's elderly care facilities and to ensure the safety of facility residents.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs and three other authorities on Thursday announced at a joint meeting that they would push forward an ongoing four-year campaign on elderly care service improvement that started in 2017.

Measures will be taken this year to enhance the quality of elderly care facilities in poverty-stricken rural areas so as to meet the demands of extremely impoverished elderly people, according to the meeting.

Authorities will further examine elderly care facilities in order to prevent accidents or cases that are morally unacceptable or may put facility residents in danger.

Over the past two years since the campaign began, local authorities have urged and helped elderly care facilities across the country to fix around 36,000 different problems that may harm their service quality.

As of the end of 2018, China had a population of 249 million aged 60 or above, while there were 163,800 facilities providing elderly care services and over 7.46 million elderly care facility beds.