Dementia: five charts that help explain Britain’s biggest killer

The number of people living with dementia in England is at an all-time high, with close to half a million diagnosed cases as of June 2024.

Dementia – Britain’s biggest killer – is an umbrella term for many conditions and affects more than 55 million people worldwide . In England, about 7,000 people are diagnosed every month.

The global health cost is expected to almost triple by 2050, and is expected to reach $2.8tn by 2030.

Here we look at the nationwide fight against a pernicious disease.

It is Britain’s biggest killer

Dementia is Britain’s leading cause of death, with more people dying of the condition in England and Wales than from any other cause. In Scotland it is second only to coronary heart disease.

Although men are still slightly more likely to die from coronary heart disease than dementia across England and Wales, figures show dementia has been the biggest killer of women every year since 2012.

A postcode lottery for diagnosis

Where you live can affect how likely you are to be diagnosed with the condition. According to estimates, 65% of over-65s with dementia in England had been diagnosed as of June 2024 – while some areas of the country had rates as low as 46%.

The government has a target to diagnose 66.7% of patients . However, the latest figures show 180 council areas in England are below that figure. The target was last met nationwide in 2019.

Last year, a report from the all-party parliamentary group on dementia found that structural issues could be stopping patients seeking or obtaining a diagnosis . These included access to a GP, cultural barriers, waiting times for memory assessment, lack of post-diagnostic support and insufficient scanners.

London – the youngest region in England – has by far the fewest number of cases compared with its population, with only 0.6% of residents confirmed to be living with dementia. The highest number of cases was found in the regions with the oldest populations – the north-east, south-east and south-west.

In 2021, Alzheimer’s Society UK predicted that there were almost 900,000 people living with dementia, with about half of those cases thought to be misdiagnosed or not picked up at all. A total 66,000 of those thought to have dementia lived in Scotland, with 44,000 living in Wales and 22,000 in Northern Ireland.

It is not a disease that just affects older people

Although almost everyone diagnosed is over the age of 65, one in every 14 known dementia sufferers in England in mid-2024 had young-onset dementia, meaning they were diagnosed before their 65th birthday.

Men are more likely to be diagnosed with young-onset dementia than women. NHS figures show there were 13% more men than women under the age of 65 diagnosed with dementia, and almost double the number of men under 50 than women under 50 with a diagnosis in England.

Looking at older age groups, women with dementia outnumber men and from the age of 80 there are twice as many women with the disease as there are men – probably because women have a longer life expectancy. NHS figures also suggest that white people have a lower rate of diagnosis than other ethnic groups.

There are many kinds of dementia

Alzheimer’s is by far the most commonly diagnosed type of dementia, making up 42.4% of diagnoses in England and about 62% in Scotland . In England, the next most common types of dementia are vascular dementia (15.6%) and mixed dementia, where a patient has more than one type.

However, the diagnosis figures don’t represent the full picture. Hundreds of thousands of people with certain types of dementia, especially Lewy bodies, which includes Parkinson’s disease dementia, may be living without a diagnosis .

A global issue with a rising healthcare bill

The number of dementia cases globally is expected to triple by 2050 , as the world’s population grows and ages.

A 2022 study in the Lancet predicted that the number of people with dementia would increase from 57m cases worldwide in 2019 to 153 million by 2050 – with increases in sub-Saharan Africa driven by population growth, and increases in east Asian mainly driven by population ageing.

With a rising caseload comes a rising healthcare bill. This year a study for the Alzheimer’s Society found that the cost of the disease in the UK alone, including economic impacts, is likely to more than double from £42.5bn today to £90.6bn by 2040.

Globally, costs are expected to double even sooner – from $1.3tn a year in 2019 to $2.8tn by 2030 . It may be Britain’s biggest killer, but dementia is also an urgent global issue that policymakers and public health planners around the world will have to engage with.