Dementia Basic Plan

Fumio Kishida administration released a draft of basic plan for promoting measures on dementia, which increase became a major issue in highly aged society of Japan. Suggesting a new view on dementia, the draft listed various measures for the government to take. The measures are shifting from prevention to coexistence with dementia, recognizing it as inevitable for anyone.

Former Cabinet led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made guidelines for promoting measures on dementia in 2019. Based on the notion that dementia is a condition of health everyone can have, the guidelines raised coexistence and prevention as the two major concepts to deal with dementia.

 

For the sufferers of dementia to live their life with hope, the guidelines proposed promotion of public understanding, prevention or delay of being dementia, support for medical care, removing barrier and participation in social activities, and research and development. The guidelines targeted between 2019 and 2025 as a period of the measures to be applied.

 

Later, the Basic Act on Dementia to Promote an Inclusive Society passed the Diet in 2023 and enacted in January 2024. Article 3 of the law listed seven principles for those with dementia to live in dignity with a sense of purpose. “To enable all persons with dementia to be able to lead their lives as individuals with freedom to make their own choices enjoying their fundamental human rights,” one of the principles says. Article 4 demands the national government to formulate a basic plan.

 

So, the draft is a work of Kishida administration required by the law. The draft recognizes 4.43 million aged people with dementia and 5.59 million with mild cognitive impairment as of 2022. The number is supposed to be increasing by around twenty percent in 2040. It proposed new concept of dementia, which does not mean that a person with dementia can do nothing, but can do what he or she want to do and live a life with dignity, maintaining relationship with families and friends.

 

The draft raised twelve measures, which are listed up in between Article 14 and 25 of the basic act. One of them, participation in social activities, includes supporting a system in which a person with dementia will receive reward from local nursery station, when he or she takes part in voluntary social service. The government will support such activities as declaration of dementia barrier free, exercised by companies or organizations.

 

However, there is something to do in terms of medical treatment. There is only one medicine for dementia, which is named Lecanemab, authorized as working for Alzheimer type of dementia. While it is expected that the second medicine will be approved soon, the support of the government for the medical institutes to introduce new medicine is not sufficient. It is important for an outgoing administration to maintain the momentum in the following ones.

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