Many people are unaware of the difference between the problems associated with normal ageing and the signs of Alzheimer’s disease, the Taiwan Catholic Foundation of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia said yesterday.
According to government statistics, there are about 170,000 to 190,000 people with Alzheimer’s disease in Taiwan, and the number is expected to grow to 620,000 in 2046, which would place Taiwan at the top of the world rankings, the foundation said.
The foundation launched an awareness campaign in 2003 with the help of the Ministry of the Interior and promoted the use of the Short Portable Mental State Questionnaire (SPMSQ) to help evaluate whether an elderly person has Alzheimer’s.
Chen Chun-yu (陳俊佑), director of social work at the foundation, said that families with elderly relatives should have them screened using two questionnaires — SPMSQ and AD8 — provided in the dementia awareness handbook published by the foundation.
The AD8 is an eight-item questionnaire designed to help identify people with early dementia.
Though there is no cure for dementia, “there are some good ways to lower the chance of developing the disease,” such as regular exercise, keeping stress under control and following a Mediterranean diet, Chen said.
“By Mediterranean, we mean eating lots of vegetables and fruits and a diet rich in fish, whole grains and olive oil. And avoid red meat as much as possible,” Chen said.
Families with an Alzheimer’s patient should take their caregiving capability into consideration when deciding about asking for extra help or placing a patient in a nursing home, Chen said.
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:
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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