Currently it is believed that about 24.3 million people world-wide have Alzheimer's disease. Research reported in The Lancet medical journal for Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI) believes that by 2020 42.3 million will have dementia and by 2040, 81.1 million people; i.e. a doubling of todays figures.
Families, communities, health care and social security systems will struggle to cope under the impact such huge increases as estimated numbers of people with dementia and the cost to Governments sky rocket. World costs of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia care by Bengt Winblad, M.D., Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Chief Physician at the Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge and the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, in June 2004 estimated costs for dementia in 2003 at $156 billion (U.S.), based on a worldwide prevalence estimate of 27.7 million people with dementia. Now think what the cost will be when 81.1 million people are affected with dementia.
Unless a cure or at least an effective treatment to minimize the effects of Alzheimer's disease and other types of dementia can be found it is difficult to envisage quite how we will cope.
Article source: Alzheimer's Disease International The Lancet December 2005,
Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Care Bengt Winblad, M.D., Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Chief Physician at the Karolinska University Hospital, Huddinge and the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
01/09/06
