Source: theguardian.com<\/p>\n
Dementia\u00a0poses a threat to global health on the same scale as HIV and Aids, the Dutch government has said, warning that the number of people with the condition will not be far off the population of Germany by 2030.<\/p>\n
In a\u00a0speech\u00a0to the World Dementia Council summit in Japan on Friday, Hugo de Jonge, the Dutch health minister, said dementia was underfunded, misunderstood and overlooked, as HIV and Aids were in their\u00a0early days.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly when it became clear how quickly the epidemic of HIV\/Aids was taking hold \u2026 taking millions of lives around the globe, did a global awareness emerge,\u201d De Jonge said. \u201cA huge sense of urgency arose \u2026 and around 15 years after the epidemic first took hold, an effective treatment had been found.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we are on the verge of another epidemic; not a disease that attacks our immune systems, but our brain, our memory, our personality, ourselves. Like HIV\/Aids in its early days, dementia is a globally underfunded area of medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed out that if all people believed to\u00a0have dementia\u00a0lived in one country, it would be roughly the\u00a0size of Spain, and cited predictions that by 2030, this hypothetical nation would contain nearly 75 million people. \u201cBy then, it should become a member of the G7,\u201d De Jonge said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe costs of dementia care by that time are estimated at a\u00a0staggering $2tn\u00a0(\u00a31.6tn). No one should be in any doubt: dementia is one of the biggest medical and social challenges we\u2019ll face in the years ahead. In some countries, it already is the\u00a0main cause of death.\u201d<\/p>\n