A SHOCKING statistic on this very tiny island of the world here! From the Front Page Sections, translated…
As the rates of getting tested is low, there were only a little over eighty thousand who are known to have been diagnosed, the Department of Health and Social Welfare started a “search” program, to find the support that’s needed by the elderly populations.
The Department of Health and Social Welfare estimated that there are, about 270,000 people who had been diagnosed with dementia, but there were only a little over 80,000 who were treated as patients by the national health insurances’ estimates, only thirty percent of the total estimate, in other words, there are close to 200,000 who have dementia, who are, lost, outside the caring networks.
The Department of Health & Welfare stated, that in the database of the National Health Insurances programs, there were only a little over 80,000 known individuals who were diagnosed with dementia, and if they’d considered the arterial hardening patients who showed signs of dementia, there were only 190,000 elderly who are currently being treated, and even so, there are, close to 100,000 elderly who are demented, due to whatever reasons, who’d not gotten the care they’d needed.
So what had, caused this? The president of the psychiatric department of the Alzheimer’s Association in Taiwan, Lai said, that people in Taiwan know really little about dementia, even for the medical professional, other than the psychiatric and neurology departments, the rest of the departments knew little or nothing about dementia. And there was a lacking in the provisions of care, and the government didn’t dare conduct larger scale diagnostics, so there’s, this low rate of diagnoses.
The Alzheimer’s Community Care Center’s C.E.O. Kuo said, that in the past, when they’d suspected that there’s an elderly with dementia, they’d only handed out the flyers, without any follow-ups, plus there’s a taboo on Alzheimer’s, the families or the patients themselves, didn’t like getting labeled as “demented”, making receiving the needed help even harder.
An eighty-eight year old elderly man, Lee, six years ago, started showing signs of dementia, he’d been retired, and told his family that he was going to work, and his wife worried what their relatives might say, didn’t take him to get treatment, only hired a foreign nurse to look after him, and he’d rotated living with his four children.
Because of his dementia, Lee would often refused to eat his meals, became malnourished, and lost weight. The care center communicated with the families, in the end, the psychologist gave Lee’s wife an ultimatum, “Do you want to die before your husband, carrying all the burdens of care on yourself?”, then, Lee’s wife started crying, and agreed to get her husband the help he’d needed. Lee was diagnosed by a neurologists, as having progressed in the stages of dementia already. Lee’s eldest spoke up, that this didn’t just save his father, it’d saved his and his siblings’ families as well.
“With the fastened pace of aging in Taiwan, this can no longer be, avoided”, Lai said, looking after those who’d lost the abilities to look after themselves, the cost ranged from $20,000N.T. to $30,000N.T. per month. In caring for the demented elderly, because they are still mobile, are impulsive, and with the various mental conditions, it makes it even harder, and it’d cost up to $60,000N.T. per month to care.
And so, this abnormal aging process is getting costlier and costlier, and costlier, and early diagnoses is very important, it’s just, that people here still have that TABOO of how going to see a psychiatrist or neurologist meant that you’re crazy or your mind isn’t quite right, that, is why the elderly who needed the diagnoses, aren’t getting the help that they needed, to live their final years with dignity.
Life, the Obstacle Course 