Is China Ready For Dementia?

Abstract

Dementia has become a worldwide public health challenge related to population aging. Globally, one person is diagnosed with dementia every second, with a new dementia patient diagnosed every 7 seconds [1,2]. With the rapid pace of aging, China now faces the world’s largest dementia population, which constitutes one-fifth of the world’s population who suffer with the condition [1-3]. Dementia has a profound negative impact not only on the affected individual, but also on the families and caregivers, in terms of quality of life, health, and loss of income. It is estimated that one in four dementia caregivers suffer from depression and informal caregivers have a higher mortality risk compared to the general population [4,5]. In the Chinese context of filial piety and the one-child policy, dementia caregivers are mostly spouses, children, or children-in-law. Given a typical family size of five people spanning three generations, at least 30 million to 35 million people in China are directly or indirectly affected by dementia [6]. Undoubtedly, dementia is a major public health crisis in China and ways to meet the challenges are urgently needed. This brief report will present China’s dementia initiatives during the past two decades