The Legislative Yuan will review the draft of the "Dementia Basic Law" on Wednesday. Civil rights groups call for the law to include three major protection points.

The Legislative Yuan's Health and Environment Committee is expected to review the draft "Dementia Basic Law" article by article on Wednesday and Thursday. Schematic diagram, the characters in the picture have nothing to do with the content. (File photo, taken by reporter Zhang Xiesheng)

Taiwan has entered a super-aging society. The Legislative Yuan's Health and Environment Committee is expected to review the draft of the "Dementia Basic Law" article by article on Wednesday and Thursday. The Taiwan Dementia Association calls for the establishment of a judicial process guarantee and support mechanism to ensure that people with dementia have fair access to justice. Cognitive promotion and dementia delaying measures should be included to strengthen early intervention and functional maintenance. It also promotes advance planning to protect autonomy and human dignity.

The Taiwan Dementia Association pointed out that 15 versions of the "Dementia Basic Law" have been proposed by government and opposition legislators. Generally speaking, each version focuses on protecting the personal dignity and basic rights of people with dementia, attaches great importance to the support needs of people with dementia and their families, and advocates the establishment of a dementia policy promotion committee or group by the Executive Yuan, with the President of the Executive Yuan serving as the convenor, to strengthen cross-department coordination, resource integration, and policy supervision.

The Taiwan Dementia Association believes that in order to cope with the challenge of super-aging, the single-client supervisory framework should be broken and the cross-department division of powers and responsibilities should be implemented. Therefore, the "Dementia Basic Law" should not be handled by a single department of the Ministry of Health and Welfare as the competent authority. It should be handled by the Executive Yuan designated by the Executive Yuan based on policy matters. Relevant agencies should be coordinated to promote joint efforts when necessary to implement cross-department division of labor.

In addition, the Taiwan Dementia Association calls for ensuring that people with dementia have fair access to justice in the future. In particular, people with dementia may face difficulties in judicial procedures due to their cognitive, understanding, and expressive abilities being affected. The judicial system must establish a complete procedural guarantee and support mechanism, and strengthen professional training in the judicial field to ensure that people with dementia can equally seek judicial assistance, fully express their opinions, and receive fair and appropriate treatment in judicial procedures.

The Taiwan Dementia Association also emphasizes that dementia prevention and treatment should not only focus on post-diagnosis care, but should also focus on early intervention. For people with dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and high-risk groups, services and support measures related to cognitive promotion and delaying dementia should be developed.

In addition, when people with dementia face the threat that their independent wishes cannot be fully expressed or respected, a decision-making support mechanism must be in place to promote early pre-planning of medical, financial, and important life arrangements for people with dementia, so that their independent wishes can be respected at different stages of the disease, and their personality and rights can be protected.