BBC: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, more than 18,000 older people living with dementia left their homes and wandered off in Japan. Almost 500 were later found dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police say such cases have doubled since 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Elderly people aged 65 and over now make up nearly 30% of Japan’s population – the second-highest proportion in the world after Monaco, according to the World Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The crisis is further compounded by a shrinking workforce and tight limits on foreign workers coming in to provide care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japan’s government has identified dementia as one of its most urgent policy challenges, with the Health Ministry estimating that dementia-related health and social care costs will reach 14 trillion yen ($90bn; \u00a367bn) by 2030 – up from nine trillion yen in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its most recent strategy, the government has signalled a stronger pivot toward technology to ease the pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Across the country, people are adopting GPS-based systems to keep track of those who wander.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some regions offer wearable GPS tags that can alert authorities the moment a person leaves a designated area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some towns, convenience-store workers receive real-time notifications \u2013 a kind of community safety net that can locate a missing person within hours.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BBC: Last year, more than 18,000 older people living with dementia left their homes and wandered off in Japan. Almost 500 were later found dead. Police say such cases have doubled since 2012. Elderly people aged 65 and over now make up nearly 30% of Japan’s population – the second-highest proportion in the world after Monaco, according to the World Bank. The crisis is further compounded by a shrinking workforce and tight limits on foreign workers coming in to provide care. Japan’s government has identified dementia as one of its most urgent policy challenges, with the Health Ministry estimating that… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52984,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52985,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52983\/revisions\/52985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/52984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}