World Alzheimer's day - 13 years in government and still no national strategy on dementia

Posted by Bronwen Maher on September 20, 2010 at 03:00 PM

The government has more interest in bailing out failed banks than taking a planned and co-ordinated approach to meeting the current and future needs of people with Alzheimer’s and related dementia, Nessa Childers MEP said today.

The Leinster MEP, who is currently working on a European Parliament Report with the aim of better co-ordinating services and research into Alzheimers and dementia across the EU said: “Tomorrow (21st September), another World Alzheimer’s Day will pass. This marks yet another year with no concrete plan and no firm future strategy to target the limited resources we have available at the 44,000 people and 50,000 carers in Ireland who are impacted by Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia.

“The Minister for Health, Mary Harney informed me last August that the government will commence the preparation of a policy on dementia in 2011. Nothing less than a fully resourced national strategy will suffice.

“In light of our changing demographics we know that the numbers of people worldwide living with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia is predicted to double every twenty years. The time for a simple policy response has long passed.

“A detailed, comprehensive and multi-agency national strategy is demanded to meet the needs of the current generation of those living with the disease, their carers and their families and to enable the State to plan properly for the future delivery of services and supports.  

“To guarantee quality of life for Alzheimer's patients and to drastically diminish the number of patients must be the major objective of decision-makers. Better cooperation at European level too, must be one of our key objectives also. At present 85% of European research takes place without EU coordination leading to fragmented and overlapping results. In these pressing economic times a convincing case exists for an EU wide approach to research into Alzheimer’s and dementia.”

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