August 25, 2015

World Alzheimer Report 2015: a new case of dementia every three seconds worldwide




(August 25, 2015)  A new report led by King’s College London reveals one person develops dementia every three seconds across the globe.

The World Alzheimer Report 2015: 'The Global Impact of Dementia: An analysis of prevalence, incidence, cost and trends’, released today, has found that there are currently around 46.8 million people living with dementia around the world.

These numbers are projected to nearly double every 20 years, increasing to 74.7 million by 2030 and almost treble to 131.5 million by 2050.
There are more than 9.9 million new cases of dementia each year worldwide, implying one new case every 3.2 seconds.
The estimates are based on new research led by Professor Martin Prince from King’s College London’s Global Observatory for Ageing and Dementia Care.
These new findings take into account both the growing numbers of older people (population ageing), and new and better evidence on the number of people living with dementia, and costs incurred.
Professor Martin Prince notes: ‘We now believe that we underestimated the current and future scale of the epidemic by 12-13% in the 2009 World Alzheimer Report, with costs growing more rapidly than the numbers of people affected.’
The report shows that the current annual societal and economic cost of dementia is US $818 billion, and it is expected to become a trillion dollar disease in just three years’ time.



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