Please use the sharing tools found via the email icon at the top of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/a74ed65a-d4ed-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9
By 2025, 7.3m Japanese will be living with the condition — one out of every 20 people in the country. By 2050, if nothing changes, it will be one in 10. The treatment and care of people with Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia costs Japan ¥14.5tn ($128bn) a year, according to a study by Keio University. The scale of the challenge for Japanese society has prompted a rethink on dementia, with a move away from medicine and institutional care towards care in the community. With Japan’s health system struggling with shortages of both staff and money, the goal is to make dementia care part of the fabric of local life. Mr Ogawa is one of many thousands of people in communities across Japan that are gearing up to help people with Alzheimer’s and dementia to stay in their homes. Mr Ogawa has an orange band on a cord around his neck, indicating that he is an “Alzheimer’s supporter”, and thus ready to offer help on the street. Municipalities are training police officers how to respond when they find an elderly person wandering the streets. Some towns have even begun tagging people who have dementia with QR codes that can be scanned by the authorities if they get lost.
Please use the sharing tools found via the email icon at the top of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/a74ed65a-d4ed-11e7-8c9a-d9c0a5c8d5c9
“The numbers aren’t the issue,” says Kumiko Nagata, a former nurse and now director of research at the Tokyo Centre for Dementia Care, of the staggering number of Japanese people living with the condition. “What we need most of all is a change of values. Even with Alzheimer’s, there are things a person can do. They don’t need to be expelled from society. We mustn’t repeat the mistakes of the past,” she added, referring to the 1960s and 1970s when people with dementia were institutionalised in large care facilities. Community care offers hope of a kinder future for people with dementia and their families, she and others say. But it also relies on there being a community to offer that care. In the years ahead, the number of people with dementia in Japan’s large cities is set to grow and the childless postwar generation has no loving sons to help them.
Financial Times
By 2025, 7.3m Japanese will be living with the condition. Something had to change. #FTappeal
Rapidly ageing population prompts move to make care part of community life
FT.COM
沒有留言:
張貼留言