Keeping track of dementia

Dear editor: As my dog and I started off on our daily stroll up Cartwright Mountain yesterday, I was approached by a local RCMP officer to keep an eye out for an old fellow in blue slacks walking a small dog.

Apparently, the old chap had dementia and had wondered off. I hope they found him, because I didn’t see him on the trail.

This morning, the Guardian had an article about the Japanese approach to keeping track of people with dementia or Alzheimer’s which I thought was a novel approach — tag them with QR codes which would send out a signal to “dementia patrols” who could than help the lost soul find his or her way back home.

“Japan is at the forefront of a global dementia crisis — about 4.6 million of its citizens have some form of the condition, and more than 15,000 of them went missing in 2016.”

I’m thinking that a device for tracking runaway dogs (and or some people), similar to what some newer cars have, would be an excellent idea, particularly for the criminal element.

The Guardian called it Orwellian, (recall the book, 1984), but since our governments are already tracking everything we write on our computers, this concept would actually have some usefulness. Frank Martens

Summerland

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