Taipei Times
Date: Jun 11, 2019 
By: Lee I-chia  /  Staff reporter

A large proportion of elderly people who go missing have dementia, so the Taiwan Alzheimer’s Disease Association (TADA) has established a “three don’ts and six dos” system to help family members handle a missing elder case or prevent them from disappearing, the group said yesterday.

As the nation’s elderly now account for more than 14 percent of the population and the number of missing elderly people has been increasing annually, TADA said it collaborated with the National Police Agency (NPA) and the Federation for the Welfare of the Elderly to devise the system.

The “three do nots” are: Do not wait 24 hours to file a missing person’s report with the police; do not go far to file the report, just the nearest police station; and do not spend money to help the police to find a missing person.

More than 20,000 missing person reports are filed annually with the police, and about half of the missing elderly suffer from dementia, NPA Crime Prevention Division section head Lin Da-wei (林大為) said.     [FULL  STORY]