The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry in fiscal 2005 will commence establishing up to 3,000 centers intended to prevent the elderly from becoming dependent on nursing care, ministry officials said Saturday. 

The ministry will request a budgetary allocation of about 22 billion yen for the project next fiscal year to subsidize work to renovate existing public and private facilities, such as day care centers and city halls. 

The renovated facilities will serve as bases to help prevent nursing-care dependency as a way of decreasing the number of elderly people who are bedridden or suffering from senior dementia. 

The project will encourage senior citizens to take up exercises and improve their diet from an early stage so that their bodies and minds will stay healthy and they will not become dependent on nursing care. 

The ministry hopes there will eventually be one such facility in every middle school district.