Dementia and Alzheimer Disease
A rapidly growing burden with no cure and enormous unpaid care costs.
Severity score
58.4
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Around 57 million people live with dementia and the number is projected to nearly triple by 2050 as populations age. Most care is provided unpaid by families, so the measured economic cost badly understates the real burden. Treatment options remain marginal.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
62Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
70People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
76Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
2Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
68Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.