Dementia to explode worldwide
The most up-to-date predictions about the future of dementia globally have been released to mark the centenary of the initial description of the disease by a German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer. They show that some countries are heading for a 300% increase in prevalence over the next few years.
Prevalence is the number of people living with dementia at any time and an expert panel brought the best available figures together to make estimates of the future prevalence of dementia across the world.
They concluded that the figures will roughly double every 20 years: over 80 million people with dementia by 2040, with the majority in poor and middle income countries such as India and China.
In Australia, the numbers of people with dementia will reach half a million by 2040 from around 200,000 today.
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