The Control Yuan’s Committee on Domestic and Minority Affairs yesterday approved a report by Control Yuan members Chiang Chi-wen (江綺雯) and Lin Ya-feng (林雅鋒) on the basic rights of people who have dementia, which called on the Executive Yuan to address the care of such people and ensure they have fair access to the justice system.
About 50 million people worldwide have dementia, which the WHO has listed as a “public health priority” and has advocated for the basic rights of dementia patients, Chiang told a news conference in Taipei.
Domestic research has found that women, particularly housekeepers, are more likely to develop dementia than men, which necessitates policymaking aimed at addressing their rights, she said, adding that 59.6 percent of people who hold dementia documentation issued by the Ministry of Health and Welfare are women.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
While the ministry in December last year published the “Dementia Platform 2.0,” it lacks policies to protect the basic rights of dementia patients, she said.
The Executive Yuan and the Judicial Yuan should instruct their subordinate agencies to raise public awareness about the rights of dementia patients, which would help Taiwan honor the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the report said.
It is the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s responsibility to establish “dementia-friendly communities” and include them in the government’s Long-term Care Services Program 2.0, while the Ministry of Education should create individualized education plans and curriculum guidelines for dementia patients, it said.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications should install image-based incident detection systems to learn about and prevent traffic accidents caused by dementia patients, while the National Police Agency should establish a database of dementia patients’ fingerprints to aid efforts to locate missing persons who have dementia, Chiang said.
Teenagers can also develop dementia, but the limited protections afforded dementia patients are available only to older people, Chiang and Lin said, adding that few services have been introduced to meet the needs of patients of different ages and gender.
Relevant agencies also do not have a database for dementia cases, leaving them unable to reach out to dementia patients and provide assistance, they said.
Regarding dementia patients’ right to work, the Ministry of Labor has not compiled data on the number of such people in the workforce, nor has it introduced any policies to introduce them into the workplace, Chiang and Lin said, calling on it to launch job placement programs designed for dementia patients.
The Judicial Yuan should ensure that dementia patients have equal rights to legal resources in criminal, civil and administrative lawsuits and domestic affairs, and ascertain whether they have been treated unfairly due to the limitations of the legal system, they said.
Law enforcement personnel should gain a better understanding of the disease to offer patients better protection, they added.
Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association secretary-general Tang Li-yu (湯麗玉) lauded the report as “invaluable” and called on all agencies mentioned in the report to issue responses to the suggestions for the betterment of dementia patients’ rights.
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