• Question: why did david cameron recently make dementia a important thing?

    Asked by anon-48782 to Rebecca, Heather, Ditte, Dave, Ben on 20 Jun 2014.
    • Photo: Ben White

      Ben White answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hi @11jnandha!

      I don’t think David Cameron made dementia an important thing recently, it’s a disease that’s been known about for a very long time. At a G8 summit last year, experts in the study of dementia set a challenge for the world to find a cure by 2025. In the UK alone there are around 800,000 people living with dementia. Worldwide that number is 40 million – and it is set to double every 20 years. So it is up there with cancer as one of the big diseases affecting our lives, and the lives of our friends and families.

      Here’s a quick video that explains what dementia is, and why it’s important scientists work to find a cure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q-H1-XwCZA

    • Photo: Rebecca Gladstone

      Rebecca Gladstone answered on 20 Jun 2014:

      Hi 11jnandha, i see you have been paying attention to the news!
      David Cameron was expected to encourage a renewed effort to find new drugs to treat dementia.
      Dementia is disease that occurs late in life and as our large population grows old and lives longer it will become more and more common. This will make it difficult to care for everyone properly in the future so we must start trying now to help those suffering today but to also help all the people that will grow old next!

    • Photo: Ditte Hedegaard

      Ditte Hedegaard answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      It is thought that about 670,000 people suffers of dementia and that there are even more that has not been diagnosed yet. According to David Cameron the costs associated with the disease are already higher than those of cancer and heart diseases, which is probably because people with server dementia needs 24hours care and expensive medication to slow down the progression of dementia.

      Dementia is a terrible disease, which will result in the affected person not recognising family and friends and eventually will forget how to talk, eat and walk. What is different about dementia compared to a lot of other diseases is that the person might not be aware that he or she is ill and the family and friends therefore have to fight against the disease alone. This can have a massive psychological impact on the family and friends.

      Anyone can be effected by dementia and there is currently no cure against it. Personally I can’t think of anything worse than losing my mind and not knowing anyone or anything, perhaps David Cameron think the same way and has realised that more research is required to come up with a cure against this horrible disease.

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