The West Australian: Rhianna King

Some residents in WA's nursing homes are so malnourished that they are turning up at emergency departments with symptoms similar to AIDS victims, according to a leading aged care specialist.

Royal Perth Hospital aged care services physician Roger Warne said the "revolving door" of malnourished elderly patients was partly because of inadequate staffing and training at nursing homes.

Dr Warne said that while some patients were malnourished because they were seriously ill or dying, others found the food unappealing or couldn't physically feed themselves.

"The quality of feeding programs at some residential facilities is not optimal. Increased staff numbers and better training could allow elderly residents to be manually fed," he said.

He called for an aged care teaching program to be set up in Perth and for more co-operation between Perth's major hospitals and nursing homes.

"You've got no control of what's going on once you've sent the (patients) out," he said.

"Aged care physicians consult in institutional care but are not involved in medical direction as used to occur in government nursing homes, which have been closed."

Severe malnutrition caused immune deficiencies similar to those caused by AIDS, Dr Warne said.

"Weight loss of greater than 2kg in three months or 5kg in six months should make the alarm bells ring."

Victoria's Austin Health aged care director Michael Woodward said people were dying of malnutrition in nursing homes across Australia.

"There is no doubt that if a person is about to die they are less likely to eat. But some are about to die because they haven't been given the opportunity to eat," he said.

"There is a real problem with resourcing and we need better awareness."

UWA geriatric medicine professor Leon Flicker said some elderly people were not getting the assistance they needed to eat.

"A lot of people in residential care are confused, can't eat, don't want to eat. Good quality care is when people help them eat," he said.

Aged Care Association WA chief executive Robert Reid said homes put an enormous amount of effort into making sure food was not only nutritious, but interesting.

WA Aged Care Advisory Council chief executive Penny Flett said there were many reasons behind malnutrition in the elderly, including no desire to eat because of illness, and an inability to swallow.

"These are people who are not very well to start with," she said. "To achieve good nutrition in a nursing home is a real challenge. We do need to look in more detail about how people are nourished."

Dr Warne said salty foods or chocolate could encourage elderly people to eat.

"Let them have what they want, to an extent, a little bit of what you fancy does you good," he said.

Aged Care Crisis Team spokeswoman Lynda Saltarelli said she regularly got complaints from relatives of nursing home residents, who said their loved ones were starving.

Minister for Ageing Santo Santoro said all nursing homes had a requirement to provide residents with adequate nutrition and hydration, and diets and menus were reviewed frequently by specialists.