Author Archives: wendy
Let’s make dementia a word and not a sentence
Attitudes towards dementia need to change just as they have done towards cancer – but more swiftly, writes Jeremy Hunt.
By Jeremy Hunt, Health Secretary
12:01AM GMT 15 Jan 201
For much of the last century, it was cancer: a word whose very mention would strike fear and dread.
Before the 1970s, treatment was rudimentary, prognosis was bleak and the stigma attached to the condition was rife.
Today, a similar cloud hangs over dementia. With cases expected to hit one million within two years, and doubling within a generation, we need the same progress as with cancer. The difference is that if we are to make the NHS sustainable with an ageing population, we don’t have 50 years to sort it out.
How do we do it?
As today’s Alzheimer’s Society research shows, we must start with better access to, and attitudes towards, early diagnosis.
Why means testing benefits is not efficient or fair
Means testing does not work like universal benefits, it denies people entitlements they have contributed to and are eligible for
There are increasing calls for means testing more benefits. These are fertile times for such proposals and they are grabbing attention. It comes at a time when the government is cutting back on public spending in the name of reducing the deficit and when more and more people are feeling the pinch and are worried about money.
Means testing has been introduced for child benefit and is now being suggested for a wider range of benefits, particularly for older people. High profile candidates have been the travel pass and the winter fuel allowance. All older people are currently entitled to these.
Is this the loneliest generation?
Carers feel lonely
Sunday 13 January 2013
Government officials have been ordered to find out exactly how lonely Britain’s population is, amid concerns that “the most isolated generation ever” will overwhelm the NHS.
The Department of Health is attempting to measure the extent of “social isolation” in the UK, after warnings that it has sparked spiralling levels of illnesses including heart disease, high blood pressure, dementia and depression.
Research has revealed that loneliness is a growing problem in the UK – particularly among the elderly – with one in three admitting that they sometimes feel lonely. Among older people, more than half live alone, 17 per cent are in contact with family, friends and neighbours less than once a week, and almost five million say the television is their main form of company.
However, the trend is expected to worsen in the coming years. The Office for National Statistics disclosed last year that the number of Britons living alone has risen to a record 7.6 million – one million more than in 1996 and amounting to almost one in three households.
But beyond the personal problems the “loneliness epidemic” presents, ministers have been put on alert over its wider impact – and financial costs. Loneliness is blamed for piling more pressure on to health and social care services, because it can increase the risk of complaints including heart disease and blood clots. Experts also believe it encourages people to exercise less and drink more – and ultimately go to hospital more often and move into residential care at an earlier stage.
