Dementia Cases to Treble by Year 2050

Amy Taylor December 06, 2013

Report by the Alzheimer’s Disease International revealed that there are 44 million sufferers of dementia worldwide. But the number is set to ‘treble’ by year 2050.

Currently, 38% of cases are in rich countries. But the trend is expected to shift significantly by 2050, with 71% of patients being in poor and middle-income countries. The worse thing is that, according to the researchers, governments are "woefully unprepared for the dementia epidemic".

“It’s a global epidemic and it is only getting worse - if we look into the future the numbers of elderly people will rise dramatically." says Marc Wortmann, the executive director at Alzheimer Disease International. In the UK, research on dementia receives one eighth of the amount of funding that is spent on cancer research but charities say it is insufficient.

"Dementia is fast becoming the biggest health and social care challenge of this generation. We must tackle dementia now, for those currently living with the condition across the world and for those millions who will develop dementia in the future.” says Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the UK’s Alzheimer’s Society.

According to Alzheimer’s Research UK, the increasing number of people developing dementia is alarming, but research can stem the tide. "An intervention to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s by five years could halve the number of people who die with the disease, having a transformative impact on millions of people’s lives. This progress can only come through research and these figures are a timely reminder of the scale of the challenge ahead of the G8 dementia research summit." says Chief Executive Rebecca Wood.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia. There is currently no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death. According to the charity Alzheimer’s Society, there are 800,000 people with dementia in the UK and there will be over a million people with this condition by 2021.

Sources of this article:

Dementia cases ’set to treble worldwide’ by 2050

Alzheimer’s Society