World | Other World Stories
Burden of dementia-related costs grows in lower-income nations
Findings contradict WHO's identification of main old-age health hazard
- Reuters
- Published: 00:00 November 28, 2009
London : Dementia is the biggest cause of disability in old people in poorer countries and the problem and its costs for society will grow rapidly as populations age, doctors said yesterday.
British researchers studied 15,000 elderly people in seven low-income and middle-income countries and found that, contrary to previous expert opinion, dementia, not blindness, is by far the biggest cause of poor health in old age.
Renata Sousa of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London, who led the study, said this was contrary to World Health Organisation estimates that visual impairment and blindness were the biggest problems.
"Chronic diseases of the brain and mind deserve increased prioritisation," she wrote in the study published in The Lancet.
"Besides disability, they lead to dependency and present stressful, complex, long-term challenges to carers. Societal costs are enormous."
Despite decades of research, doctors still have few effective weapons against dementia, a brain-wasting disease which affects some 35 million people around the world.
The most common form of dementia is Alzheimer's and Alzheimer's Disease International predicts the number of sufferers will almost double every 20 years — to 66 million in 2030 and more than 115 million in 2050 — with much of the increase coming in poorer nations.
Sousa and colleagues looked at 15,000 people aged 65 or older in China, India, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico and Peru and worked out the proportion of disability that was due to certain illnesses. They found that in regions other than rural India and Venezuela, dementia made the largest contribution to disability with 25 per cent prevalence.
Share this article
More from Other World Stories
More from World
News Editor's choice
-
Violence marks start of Philippine poll campaign
Political violence has again emerged as a main concern in the run-up to the May elections
-
Michael Jackson's doctor denies manslaughter
Conrad Murray is accused of giving Jackson a fatal dose of an anesthetic to help him sleep
-
Prescott's wife recalls day he admitted to cheating
She talks openly in autobiography of inability to forgive him
