Seniors with cognition-impairing conditions should be fingerprinted to help police and family locate them should they wander off and get lost, the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Taichung Hospital said in a statement on Friday.
Fingerprinting can be a last resort in handling elderly people getting lost when other methods have failed, said Lieutenant Captain Hung Chiao-ying (洪巧螢), an investigator at the Taichung Police Department’s First Precinct.
Digital bracelets, name tags and contact information on garments are useful anti-wandering tools, but people with Alzheimer’s disease or other kinds of dementia can still get lost even when they have these devices, she said.
Bracelets could be left at home, sewn-on information could be worn out, and sometimes senior citizens leave their residence at night without anyone noticing, Hung said.
Fingerprinting could be invaluable in identifying wandering elderly people, as many hospitals have scanners that are connected to the national police database, which enables families to find relatives anywhere in Taiwan, she said.
Last year, Taichung Hospital’s emergency room received an elderly man from first responders who had found him lying unconscious by the side of a road, it said, adding that he was wearing light clothing on a winter night.
Doctors determined that the man had fainted due to low blood pressure, and they were able to revive him, but they later found that he did not know his name or home address, it said.
Working with the police, the hospital identified him as a 66-year-old surnamed Liu (劉) via his fingerprints, it said.
Liu’s son had put his father’s prints into the system on the advice of the hospital’s dementia care center, enabling it to reunite him with his family, it said.
Fingerprints are an important addition to identity bracelets, emergency contact cards and cellphone location-tracking apps provided by hospitals, Taichung Hospital dementia care specialist Tseng Ching-jung (曾靖容) said.
More than a quarter of people with dementia who are reported missing are found dead, Tseng said.
One out of every 13 people older than 65 has dementia or another disease that results in cognitive decline, and the hospital treats two to three lost elderly people every month, Taichung Hospital deputy superintendent Lin Shaw-wen (林紹雯) said.
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