The aging population is clearly growing. The risk of developing neurological conditions associated with dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease, grows as seniors get older.
The World Alzheimer Report 2015: ‘The Global Impact of Dementia: An analysis of prevalence, incidence, cost and trends has been released and indicates that the number of people with dementia is going up more rapidly than ever before, which means the amount of money spent on treatment is going up as well.
As the report stated:
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There are currently around 46.8 million people living with dementia around the world, with numbers set to increase to 74.7 million by 2030 and 131.5 million by 2050. There are over 9.9 million new cases of dementia each year worldwide.
The report also 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.
As Alzheimer’s Disease International pointed out, this means that if global dementia care were a country, it would be the 18th largest economy in the world, and would exceed the market values of companies such as Apple (US $742 billion) and Google (US $368 billion).
The report indicates that dementia will have a greater impact in low and middle income countries due to a faster growing population in general and even more so with the aging population.
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The only real solution or possibility of stunting this rapid growth will come from more research dedicated toward prevention and a cure.
Photo: Flickr user Marcel Oosterwijk
