HONG KONG – Caring for dementia victims forms a growing concern. More than 70,000 dementia sufferers live here. With an ageing population, the total could quadruple by 2036, causing an ever-heavier social burden.

CADENZA: A Hong Kong Jockey Club Initiative For Seniors recently held a symposium on “Caring for People with Dementia: Needs and Services” at the University of Hong Kong. Jointly organized with HKU's faculty of social sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong's faculty of medicine, it attracted more than 400 participants.

In an opening address, Jockey Club steward Dr Rita Fan said the club's Charities Trust has donated to elderly projects for 60 years. To tackle some challenges, the club formed the Jockey Club Centre for Positive Ageing (the city's first integrative dementia-care centre) and initiated the CADENZA project.

Elderly Commission chairman Professor Alfred Chan said the foremost task is to take dementia out of shadows, ensure better knowledge and remove the stigma that sadly surrounds it.

The symposium began with an overview of dementia care in the United Kingdom and in Hong Kong by Professor June Andrews, director of the Dementia Services Development Centre at the University of Stirling, and Professor Timothy Kwok, director of the Jockey Club Centre for Positive Ageing.

Andrews said that education and cultural change are vital. She highlighted some practical British measures.

Kwok called dementia care a major social issue. He said that social and medical service-providers should take a dementia perspective and develop evidence-based dementia-care services, like training for family caregivers, quality assurance and cognitive-stimulation activities.