Over 4.1 million in India hit by dementia

London: Almost 47 million people are living with dementia around the world today, with over 4.1 million of them in India, according to a new report which also found that nearly half of all people with dementia globally will live in Asia by 2050.

The World Alzheimer Report 2015, led by King’s College London, found that there are currently around 46.8 million people living with dementia around the world, with numbers projected to nearly double every 20 years, increasing to 74.7 million by 2030 and 131.5 million by 2050.

Researchers also found that there are more than 9.9 million new cases of dementia each year worldwide, implying one new case every 3.2 seconds. The report showed that in 2015, East Asia is the world region with the most people living with dementia (9.8 million), followed by Western Europe (7.4 million).

These regions are closely followed by South Asia with 5.1 million and North America with 4.8 million.

At the country level, ten countries are home to over a million people with dementia in 2015: China (9.5 million), US (4.2 million), India (4.1 million), Japan (3.1 million), Brazil (1.6 million), Germany (1.6 million), Russia (1.3 million), Italy (1.2 million), Indonesia (1.2 million) and France (1.2 million).

The estimates are based on new research led by Professor Martin Prince from King’s College London’s Global Observatory for Ageing and Dementia Care.

The new findings take into account both the growing numbers of older people (population ageing), and new and better evidence on the number of people living with dementia, and costs incurred.

“We now believe that we underestimated the current and future scale of the epidemic by 12-13 per cent in the 2009 World Alzheimer Report, with costs growing more rapidly than the numbers of people affected,” said Prince.

According to the report, the current annual societal and economic cost of dementia is $818 billion, and it is expected to become a trillion dollar disease in just three years’ time.