(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.