Well before the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, dementia care posed unique challenges to every health care system. Global estimates for dementia are sobering, with numbers expected to almost double every 20 years, to 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050 (Prince et al., 2013). This dire prediction is juxtaposed with a woefully inadequate workforce to care for individuals with dementia and support family caregivers. Social work education and practice with the geriatric population has been reported to lack a core set of competencies and expected proficiencies not clearly defined (Kaplan & Andersen, 2013; Keating, 2017). Nevertheless, social workers are playing key roles in dementia care around the world and have become critical components of interprofessional teams (Livingston et al., 2017), a need that is accelerating in the era of COVID-19.

中文翻译：

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痴呆症患者现在更容易与COVID-19一起生活

在冠状病毒疾病（COVID-19）大流行之前，痴呆症护理对每个医疗体系都提出了独特的挑战。全球对痴呆症的估计令人震惊，预计每20年将增加近一倍，到2030年为6570万，到2050年为1.154亿（Prince等人，2013）。这种可怕的预测与严重不足的劳动力并列在一起，无法照料患有痴呆症的人并支持家庭照料者。据报道，老年患者的社会工作教育和实践缺乏一套核心能力和预期能力，但没有明确定义（Kaplan＆Andersen，2013； Keating，2017）。然而，社会工作者在全世界痴呆症护理中发挥着关键作用，并已成为跨专业团队的重要组成部分（Livingston等，2017），