‘Our country is getting old’: the man changing how Brazil sees dementia

Fernando Peres, author and campaigner, with his late grandmother, Nilva Aguzzoli, who developed Alzheimer’s disease before dying in 2013. Photograph: Courtesy of Vovó Nilva

It took one year and countless visits to various doctors in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, for Fernando Peres to find out what was behind his grandmother’s strange behaviour.

After undergoing clinical tests, Peres’s grandmother, Nilva Aguzzoli, 73 at the time, attended a doctor’s appointment with her grandson to get the results. Two minutes before the end of the 15-minute appointment, the doctor announced that his grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease before standing up and bidding them farewell.