The Consumers’ Foundation yesterday warned of the rising prevalence of dementia among senior citizens and called for the authorities to take measures to slow its spread and improve healthcare services for sufferers.
Citing an assessment by the Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association, the foundation said that among Taiwan’s population of 23.3 million, about 20,000 people under the age of 65 suffer from dementia.
The number of people aged above 65 affected with the syndrome, which is associated with an ongoing decline of the brain and its abilities, is about 170,000, the foundation said in a press release warning of a possible depletion of social resources in the future if the prevalence is not effectively slowed.
The organization also quoted a research study by the Alzheimer’s Disease Association as saying that the prevalence among the 65-to-69 age group stands at 1.2 percent, while that of the 70-to-74 age group is 2.2 percent, the 75-to-79 group is at 4.3 percent, the 80-to-84 group is at 8.4 percent, the 85-to-89 group is at 16.3 percent and the about 90 group is at 30.9 percent.
The figures show that the dementia prevalence rate roughly doubles from one age group to the next, the foundation said.
The foundation also said that 75 percent of the 190,000 dementia patients around the nation were not diagnosed early and therefore missed the optimum time for treatment that would have slowed the onset of the disease.
Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association secretary-general Tang Li-yu (湯麗玉) said that early diagnosis and treatment of dementia would substantially lessen the number of dementia patients in the nation.
“Early discovery of the syndrome helps postpone elderly people’s degeneration,” Tang said.
However, she said the Bureau of Health Promotion at the Department of Health has failed to propose and carry out measures for the prevention and control of dementia.
Tang said that dementia sufferers need not just healthcare and hygiene maintenance, but also caregivers who can lead them in physical and mental exercises, but the nation’s long-term care service system lacks such services.
Predicting that dementia will become the major disease after cancer that will consume large amounts of social resources in the future amid the nation’s rapidly aging society, Tang urged the authorities to take the problem seriously.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching