Barcodes help keep track of the elderly
JAPAN: A Japanese town has taken to putting barcodes on elderly people to help to identify them and reunite them with their carers if they become lost.
Iruma, north of Tokyo, distributes tiny stickers bearing square QR codes which are attached to the fingernails of people with dementia.
The codes can be scanned by police, revealing personal details and addresses.
Other towns in Japan provide small trackers which can be attached to the shoes of an elderly person, and which reveal his or her presence on a mobile phone.
The fingernail stickers, which do not wash off for two weeks, have the advantage of working even for those who have wandered off in bare feet.
‘‘Being able to attach the seals on nails is a great advantage,’’ an official in Iruma said.
‘‘There are already ID stickers for clothes or shoes but dementia patients are not always wearing those items.’’
Japan has both the greatest life expectancy and one of the most rapidly ageing populations in the world. The rising number of elderly Japanese is creating enormous social problems.
Police stations, courts and prisons are having to adapt to a growing population of geriatric offenders.
Shinzo Abe, the prime minister, called an emergency summit last month after a rash of deadly accidents caused by elderly drivers.
In one town old people have been encouraged to give up their driving licences in return for free noodles.
Lots of dementia patients simply vanish after wandering away from their families and care homes into towns and cities.
In 2013, 103,000 people with dementia were reported missing by their families, a 7 per cent increase on the previous year.
Most were eventually returned to their homes but nearly 400 of them died, and 258 have never been found.
A small number who go missing are found but cannot be identified, even years later.
They include a man given the name Taro Noda. Thought to be in his 70s, he has been living in a care home in the Tokyo suburb of Noda since 2012, when he walked into a police station without any possessions or identification - and with no memory.
- The Times