Kathmandu, Aug. 2 -- Pramila Bajracharya remembers when her grandmother started hallucinating. She would forget her way back home, accuse family members of not feeding her, and refuse to wear her clothes. The doctor told the family her nerves were damaged and there was nothing they could do, so they took her to a shaman, believing she could be cured. At the time, her family had no idea what her grandmother was suffering from.
She died seven years later, after first showing signs of Alzheimer's disease, the most common type of dementia.
"We were desperate. We didn't know what was going on with her," said Bajracharya, who now runs a residential care home for dementia patients and has started an NGO, Hope Hermitage Nepal, to advocate for the...