UK Health Radio Medical News Update - Alzheimer’s Numbers Up

UK Health Radio – Medical News Update

Alzheimer’s Numbers - Up

News reported by the BBC recently indicated that the number of people in England diagnosed with dementia has risen by 62% over a period of seven years.

In 2013-14, 344,000 people received a diagnosis of Alzheimers and this was up from 213,000 in 2006-07, when statistics were first collected.

The figures also suggest an 8% rise in the number of recorded dementia cases since 2012-13.

The rise could be due to a number of factors, including an ageing population and improved diagnoses, according to the Health and Social Care Information Centre.

Hilary Evans from Alzheimer's Research UK said that the latest figures further underlined the urgent need for better treatments to help the hundreds of thousands of people affected by this devastating condition.

Half of those living with dementia were still not registered as having the condition, said George Mcnamara, of the Alzheimer's Society. "With an ageing population and more people developing the condition, diagnosing dementia must remain a priority," he added.

Hilary Evans said the figures gave some idea of the scale of the challenge in England.

"This report does not set out to investigate the reasons for the rising figures, but it's likely that recent moves to improve dementia diagnosis rates, along with an ageing population, will have contributed to this increase," she said.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre said the data would be used in planning services and the challenges facing our ageing population.  The figures produced by this information gathering will be vital for those planning and monitoring the effectiveness of dementia treatments and services Kingsley Manning who is the chairman of the Health and Social Care Information Centre has said.

Amanda Thomas

UK Health Radio – Medical News Update

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