THUNDER BAY — A new report commissioned by the Alzheimer Society of Canada suggests bold action is needed to deal with a looming dementia care crisis.
The report authored by Joshua Armstrong, a Thunder Bay-based researcher for the Alzheimer Society, says that by the year 2050 more than 1.7 million Canadians will be living with dementia, nearly three times the current number.
An average of nearly 700 individuals will be diagnosed every day.
The report states that more than one million people will be serving as care partners for a total of over 1.4 billion hours per year.
They are often taken for granted by society, it says, but the care they provide will be equivalent to nearly 700,000 full-time jobs.
Armstrong, who's affiliated with the Health Sciences Department at Lakehead University as an adjunct professor, says "For years, we've known that these numbers were coming, but they're starting to come a bit faster now with the baby boomers heading to their 80s and 90s."
In an interview, he said there are serious implications for the health care system.
"There's the need for hospital care, long-term care and home care. A lot of people with dementia actually live at home and they rely on family, friends and neighbours for support. There are going to be increasing demands on those care partners, who on average provide about 26 hours of care each week."
Armstrong's report outlines three hypothetical scenarios in which the onset of dementia was delayed by one, five or 10 years.
The goal was to demonstrate the impact if Canada was able to improve prevention efforts for dementia and delay its onset across the population.
All three scenarios showed the power of prevention.
Even a delay of just one year could result in almost 500,000 fewer new cases by 2050.
Armstrong said there's a growing list of what are called modifiable risk factors that can be addressed by individuals or health care systems, public health agencies, and levels of government.
Mitigation measures that have already been well-researched include ensuring "you stay on top of your hypertension, heart health (anything that's good for the heart is good for the brain, which reduces your risk of dementia,) but also making sure you're not drinking too much alcohol, you're getting physical activity, you're not carrying too much weight around, seeking treatment if you have depression, and not smoking," he said.
Although no cure or effective treatment for dementia has been discovered yet, the report outlines a range of actions that can lead to more positive outcomes for patients and their families.
It suggests that health-care systems provide primary care physicians with better education on the timely detection of dementia symptoms, diagnosis, and particularly ongoing.
Clinicians, the report states, also require better access to diagnostic tools, education on risk reduction approaches, and changes to fee structures so they have adequate time and remuneration to provide support to patients and their care partners.
Among numerous other measures, it recommends that the federal government cost out and fully fund a national dementia strategy and increase its investment in research, and that provincial governments create new community care and long-term care spaces that are dementia-friendly.
In a foreward to the report, Dr. Brian Goldman describes dementia as arguably the great health challenge facing Canada's aging society.
He says the study seeks to fill a gap in data, because what's even more daunting is not knowing the scale of the challenge and its impact on the country.
The Alzheimer Society will release two other reports in the coming months.
The next report will provide details about the people who will experience dementia over the next three decades, including differences between sexes, expected population shifts in the ethnicity of people living with dementia, and young-onset dementia.
In the final report, a simulation model will be used to examine the economic impact of dementia in Canada.
Thunder Bay researcher warns of huge increase in dementia cases - Tbnewswatch.com
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment