G8 Summit: Leading Nations have Committed to Developing a Cure or Treatment for Dementia by 2025

Wednesday, 11th December 2013

At the recent G8 Dementia summit held in London, Health Ministers met to discuss the best ways to advance research into dementia, and committed to increase funding so that the aim of developing a cure or treatment for dementia could be achieved by 2015.

Currently 44 million people suffer from dementia around the world, however it is anticipated that by 2050 this number will have trebled to 135m. In the light of this, the summit leaders at the meeting called on the World Health Organisation to identify dementia as “an increasing threat to global health”

Speaking at the event Prime Minister David Cameron told the summit “this is a disease that steals lives, wrecks families and breaks hearts”. He went on to say “If we are to beat dementia we must also work globally, with nations, business and scientist from all offer the world, working together as we did with cancer, HIV and Aids”.

With the focus on dementia this week, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) announced plans to undertake 150 unannounced inspections of the care of dementia patients at a number of facilities across the country. It was also announced that a dementia brain scan will also be introduced by the NHS.