A foundation that seeks to develop a cure for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease found that these illnesses were responsible for over one in ten deaths in the UK last year.
Any medications “deemed safe and effective” to treat the condition should be made available on the NHS as soon as possible, according to Alzheimer’s Research UK.
According to the charity’s estimate, 74,261 people died in 2022 from dementia and Alzheimer’s, up from 69,178 in 2021.
It stated that women made up more than 48,000 of the total.
According to Hilary Evans of Alzheimer’s Research UK, dementia is the greatest health catastrophe of our time, casting a shadow over the over one million people living with the illness in the UK.
Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were responsible for 65,967 fatalities in England and Wales in 2018, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency’s data indicates that these conditions were also responsible for 2,017 deaths.
According to data from the National Records of Scotland, the country had 6,277 deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, however ischemic heart disease was the main cause of death during that time.
The NHS estimates that 944,000 people in the UK are suffering with dementia.
The data is “unsurprising,” but it “paints a stark picture of the scale and impact of dementia across the UK,” according to Hilary Evans, chief executive of Alzheimer’s Research UK.
“We fear these figures are likely an underestimate,” she continued. “Data on who gets diagnosed and where is frustratingly incomplete, and this makes dementia a huge blind spot for politicians and healthcare decision-makers.” Many people with dementia do not even obtain an official diagnosis.
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