Health centers in fourteen Latin American countries will participate from March 2020 in an international initiative that seeks to "control all risk factors for dementia," according to the Foundation for the Fight Against Childhood Neurological Diseases (Fleni), which will coordinate the project.

This is the "Finger" initiative (The Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability), created by Finnish physician Miia Kivipelto, who applied it for the first time in her country in 2015 with "surprising" results, which then spread to the United States and China.

The project, which will now be replicated in Latin America and coordinated by Argentina, will seek to prevent the appearance of dementias such as Alzheimer's "through diet and physical and cognitive exercise," so 1,400 people will be recruited to participate for free in a year-long study.

Kivipelto visited Buenos Aires along with the head of Mental Health of the World Health Organization (WHO), Devora Kestel, and representatives of the fourteen participating countries.

Kivipelto, a professor at the University of Eastern Finland and the Karolinska Institute, explained that the proposal consists "basically of aerobic and anaerobic exercise, a diet similar to the Mediterranean diet, cognitive rehabilitation, resocialization and control of cardiovascular risk factors.

"In Finland, success was superior to any medication currently available. In light of these results, similar programs were implemented in the United States, Australia, Singapore and China, and the possibility of extending it to Latin America immediately arose," he said.

The scientist explained that dementia is defined as "the gradual deterioration of our cognitive functions, those that allow us to know the world and interact with it, such as attention, orientation, memory and language. With this intervention, we hope that this deterioration does not occur or can even be reversed.

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