New figures on dementia in Australia

As the Australian population grows and ages, the number of people with dementia is expected to rise, increasing the requirement for appropriate care services and placing significant demands on the amount of time and help provided by carers, says a new report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).

The report, Dementia in Australia: national data analysis and
development, shows the number of people with dementia is expected to
increase to almost 465,000 by 2031.

Based on the studies used for this report, there were 37,000 new cases of dementia in 2003, making a total of 175,000 people with dementia in Australia in that year.

Around 75,000 people with dementia were living in cared accommodation in 2003. Of those living in residential aged care, 61% were in the two highest care categories.

The report said that people with dementia use a substantial amount of
health and aged care services – for example in 2003 they used 1.4
million hospital patient days and 24.7 million residential aged care
bed-days.

They also require a significant amount of time and help from
their carers and many carers experience distress associated with the
behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia.

The report takes a new approach to estimating expenditure and outlines
ways in which data sources can be developed to help improve our
knowledge and understanding of dementia.

The new approach to estimating expenditure takes account of other health conditions a person with dementia may have, resulting in estimates that can be specifically attributed to the dementia condition.

Calculated this way, total health and welfare expenditure for dementia
in 2003 is estimated at $1.4 billion, with the majority in the
residential aged care sector where $993 million is attributed to
dementia.