Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) yesterday said the ministry aims to increase public awareness of dementia and enhance its diagnostic accordance rate to at least 50 percent in four years.
Chen made the remarks at an academic conference on dementia held in Taipei.
The number of Taiwanese with dementia is estimated to reach nearly 560,000 in 2035, and their long-term care will put a greater burden on families and society, Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association (TADA) chairman Lai Te-jen (賴德仁) said.
Chen said that about 40 years ago, a member of his family was diagnosed with dementia. His family, at first unaware of the disease, did not understand her absurd behavior and treated her poorly.
Forty years later, the ministry has asked 26 affiliated hospitals to establish dementia outpatient clinics and collaborate with local long-term care centers to improve diagnostics, treatment and care, he said.
Chen said he aims to expand the number of dementia care centers to 63 from 20 and the amount of service stations to 368 within four years.
He also aims to raise the dementia diagnostic accordance rate from 30 percent to 50 percent, as well as increase public awareness of the disease, he said.
Responding to questions about new Taiwan Dementia Policy guidelines, Chen said they are to be announced by next year and that the ministry would make dementia prevention and care a priority.
In a meeting on Friday with Alzheimer’s Disease International chairman Glenn Rees and TADA representatives, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) said that the government would finish the guidelines by the end of the year.
The WHO estimates that worldwide, someone develops dementia every three seconds, Tsai said, adding that more than 260,000 people in Taiwan are estimated to have dementia, with an additional 10,000 developing the disease every year.
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