The worldwide costs of dementia will reach US$604 billion this year, more than 1 percent of global GDP output, and those costs will soar as the number of sufferers triples by 2050, according to a report yesterday.
To show the scale of the problem, an Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) report said that if the costs of caring for an estimated 35.6 million people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias were seen as a country, it would be the world’s 18th-largest economy, ranking between Turkey and Indonesia.
“World governments are woefully unprepared for the social and economic disruptions this disease will cause,” said Daisy Acosta, ADI’s chairman, describing dementia as “the single most significant health and social crisis of the 21st century.”
The report, jointly authored by Martin Prince of Britain’s King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry and Anders Wimo of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, combined the most up-to-date global data on dementia prevalence with added research from care studies in Latin America, India and China.
Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, a fatal brain-wasting disease that affects memory, thinking, behavior and the ability to handle daily activities.
“Alzheimer’s is not normal aging. It is not just a little memory loss. It is a progressive, degenerative disease ... with the high risk factor being age. As that unfolds, we’re going to see dramatic increases in Alzheimer’s,” Harry Johns, president of the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association (AA), said in a telephone interview.
ADI predicts that as populations age, dementia cases will almost double every 20 years to around 66 million in 2030 and 115 million in 2050, with much of the rise in poorer nations.
Low-income nations currently account for less than 1 percent of total worldwide costs, the report said, but have 14 percent of the cases of dementia, while middle-income nations account for 10 percent of the costs and 40 percent of the prevalence.
In comparison, rich nations accounted for 89 percent of the costs, but 46 percent of cases. Around 70 percent of global costs now occur in two regions: Western Europe and North America.
A report by the AA in May found that from this year to 2050, the cost of caring for Americans over 65 with Alzheimer’s will increase more than six times to US$1.08 trillion per year.
“The developed world is currently where the bulk of the problem is,” Johns said. “The developing world will be a place where the problem grows dramatically later.”
Only a handful of governments have national dementia or Alzheimer’s policy strategies — France, England, Australia do, but the US and many developing nations do not.
“Governments really need to wake up to this,” Prince said in a telephone interview. “It’s all very well for some countries at the moment to say we have families who can take care of these people ... but that is a very dangerous strategy.”
In the US, the Alzheimer’s Association is pushing for passage of a bill that would create a government body to focus research efforts and develop a national dementia plan.
“This is a disaster that is already happening. It’s not like the kind of thing that catches us off guard,” Johns said.
Despite decades of research into Alzheimer’s, scientists have so far failed to develop drugs that can halt or reverse the brain-wasting disease.
About 100 compounds are being explored in clinical trials as potential future drugs, but some experts say recent failures of experimental drugs in late-stage trials may scare pharmaceutical firms away from Alzheimer’s research.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia