CHENNAI: After emerging as the leader in the global diabetes race, it looks like India is set to achieve its next ignominious health distinction. With a documented 3.7 million elderly people suffering from dementia, India currently ranks third, behind only China and the USA “Going by the numbers, this is a very dire reality. We have to make some effort to ensure that we don’t emerge as the dementia capital of the world next,” said Dr E S Krishnamoorthy, director of the TS Srinivasan Institute of Neurological Sciences at the VHS, Adyar.These numbers were part of a WHO report titled ‘Dementia - A Public Health Priority’ published a few days ago, and Dr Krishnamoorthy was one of the four global advisors who assisted the WHO in preparing this report.India’s population of sufferers from Alzheimer’s disease and Vascular Dementia (the two major afflictions that denote this condition) is estimated to more than double by 2030 and then grow exponentially by 2050, says the report.“This will ensure that the money spent on dementia care and consultation will go up threefold,” he added. As there are almost twice the documented number of people believed to be living with dementia in India, it is imperative that the findings in this report are taken heed of by policy makers, he said, “There are a great number of people from civil society to healthcare professionals and others who are willing to support people with dementia, but there has to be a unified national policy to bring that together,” he said, expressing a wish that schemes like the NREGS could be used to provide care-givers for people in rural areas.Another important aspect is that more doctors need to be trained to spot someone with mental degeneration or signs of it.“The allopathic doctors seem to know a decent amount and have drugs to slow down the progression of this disease, but imagine if siddha, hunani and homeopathic doctors were also trained to spot these symptoms. The detection rate of dementia would increase manifold,” said Krishnamoorthy.Considering the disease is terminal, a large amount of attention needs to be paid not only to the afflicted but also to the persons taking care of them (care-givers), “Plenty of times we have seen that the stress, constant worry and loss of livelihood take their toll on care-givers who are mostly children of the afflicted. Over 60 per cent of people with dementia have this kind of family care,” he explained. While this might bode well for the patients, who remain in their homes, there is a growing worry that the negative impact might be too much for the care-givers, without counselling.
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