The death of an elderly man who suffered from dementia, possibly as a result of being exposed to the cold weather, has highlighted the need to pay closer attention to dementia patients.
The 63-year-old man, surnamed Yu (余), lived in Taipei and went to see a friend in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口) last Sunday. He took the wrong bus when returning home and went missing. His body was found in a vacant lot in Linkou on Friday.
There were no obvious external injuries on Yu, and police suspect that he died of exposure during the cold front that has recently hit Taiwan.
An initial investigation showed that the bus driver first took Yu to a police station, but the policeman on duty let him go after allegedly judging him to be normal and capable of answering questions.
Yu’s distraught family accused the policeman of being careless in his handling of the case, saying that he should at least have notified the family.
In October, Yu went missing in New Taipei City’s Tamsui District (淡水), but two policemen took him to a police station and informed his family. They then escorted him to the MRT Tamsui Station and asked a metro official to accompany him to MRT Shuanglian Station, where his family picked him up.
According to National Police Agency data, the number of missing elderly individuals has averaged 3,400 per year over the past three years, with nearly 10 people reported missing every day.
Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association president Chiu Ming-jang (邱銘章) said that the growing number of dementia sufferers being reported missing reflects an increase in the number of people suffering from the illness.
Chiu said that these people have difficulty because they can become disoriented. He urged people to extend a helping hand if they suspect that an elderly person might have dementia.
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
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