Dementia Cases May Triple by 2050 as World Ages

17 April 2012

An unidentified man suffering from Alzheimer's disease sleeps all day before passing away in a nursing home in the Netherlands, July 2008. (file photo)

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Dementia is the loss of mental abilities caused by brain disorders that affect memory, thinking, behavior and judgment. The most common cause of dementia, especially in older people, is Alzheimer's disease. It causes up to seventy percent of dementia cases.

Worldwide an estimated thirty-six million people are living with dementia. A new report predicts that number will increase to more than one hundred fifteen million by twenty-fifty.

The report is from the World Health Organization and Alzheimer's Disease International. Marc Wortman is the executive director of this group of seventy-eight Alzheimer's associations.

MARC WORTMANN: "There is a new case now in every four seconds, a new case of dementia in the world. Only ten years ago, it was calculated at one in seven seconds, so it is speeding up. And if you look into the future projections, it may be close to one in every second by the year twenty-fifty. So we need to act. We need to do something to stop this epidemic."

The number of cases in the heavily populated developing world is expected to grow as more people live longer. The report says more than half of those with dementia now live in low- and middle-income countries. This number is likely to rise to more than seventy percent by twenty-fifty.