Tag Archives: alzheimers
Britain unprepared for 'tsunami' of dementia patients
More than one million people are expected to be living with the disease in 10 years, but there are not enough care homes.
Sunday 16 September 2012
Britain’s dementia crisis is so huge that care homes and the health system will soon be unable to cater for the “tsunami” of people expected to be living with the condition, health experts warn. Unless a radical overhaul is taken, they say that hundreds of thousands of patients will face a future defined only by neglect.
Days before World Alzheimer’s Day and the start of a three-month national dementia awareness campaign launched by the Department of Health (DoH), researchers and former government advisers told The Independent on Sunday that if current trends continue, the healthcare system will reach saturation point in coming years.
One in three people over the age of 65 will go to their grave with dementia – a group of symptoms that slowly cause the mind to deteriorate. More than 800,000 people in this country live with the condition, and the number is expected to rise to more than a million in less than 10 years’ time. Britons now fear dementia more than cancer or death, according to a national poll, but new research by the Alzheimer’s Society shows that fewer than one in 10 people aged 55 or over have a plan in place to deal with a family member’s diagnosis.
‘I was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at 52’
Ann Johnson moved into a care home in Greater Manchester soon after she was diagnosed with dementia six years ago. Nothing unusual in that perhaps, except that Ann was then just 52 years old.
She has early-onset Alzheimer’s, something which affects 5% of people with the disease, and she is passionate about talking about it.
A former nurse and lecturer at the University of Manchester, she is no stranger to the disease. She and her mother watched her father suffer with Alzheimer’s over many years before he died.
Daughter angry about closure of Norfolk dementia care unit
A concerned daughter has blasted Norfolk County Council’s plans to close a dementia unit in Blofield which she says has made a huge difference to her mother’s life.
David Freezer Wednesday, September 5, 2012
9:20 AM
A concerned daughter has blasted Norfolk County Council’s plans to close a dementia unit in Blofield which she says has made a huge difference to her mother’s life.
Allison Little, from Neatishead, is unhappy with the county council’s reasoning for closing the Stocks Lane Day Centre in Blofield – which, as reported in Saturday’s Norwich Evening News, is due to happen this autumn.
Ms Little’s 82-year-old mother, also from Neatishead, attends the day centre five days a week as she has Alzheimer’s disease.
