Kirsty Duncan is a Liberal member of parliament (Etobicoke North) and critic for the Environment. She has a Ph.D. in geography (University of Edinburgh, 1992) and has taught meteorology, climatology, and climate change at the University of Windsor, corporate social responsibility and medical geography at the University of Toronto and global environmental processes at Royal Roads University. She served on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an organization that won the 2007 Nobel Prize with Al Gore and is the author of Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientist’s Search for a Killer Virus (University of Toronto Press, 2003), and Environment and Health: Protecting our Common Future (2008).

He was 80 years old and they had been married for 60 years. He kept his promise to her. He installed a hospital bed in their living room and for seven years he was her sole caregiver, bathing her, feeding her and carrying her upstairs to the washroom.

This is a story that is all too familiar to 500,000 families across our great country. Yet the government continues to abdicate leadership, by failing to develop a pan-Canadian dementia strategy.

Dementia is not a normal part of aging. A new case of dementia occurs every four seconds resulting in almost eight million new cases annually. Over 35 million people today live with dementia; time spent in fully dependent care exceeds that of cancer, heart disease and stroke combined.

Treating and caring for people with dementia currently costs the world more than US$ 604 billion per year. This includes the cost of providing health and social care, and the reduced, or loss of, income of people with dementia and their caregivers. In the United States, the number of medical claims for Alzheimer’s treatments increased 250 percent during the 1990s, and is expected to increase 300 percent over the next ten years.

If dementia care were a country, it would be the world’s twenty-first largest economy, and if it were a company it would be the world’s largest — surpassing even retail giant Wal-Mart.

Worldwide, the number of people living with dementia is expected to double by 2030 (to 65 million) and more than triple by 2050 (to 115 million). Due to aging population demographics, dementia is an increasing concern in terms of health care and health economics and is therefore a critical public health priority; thus, the time to act is now.

Today in Canada, someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease once every five minutes, and the cost to the healthcare system is $15 billion annually. In 30 years, someone will be diagnosed with Alzheimer`s disease once every two minutes, and the cost will be $153 billion. If given appropriate support, many people living with dementia could be enabled to have a good quality of life and prolong their contributions within society.

Dementia is overwhelming for those living with the disease and their caregivers. We therefore have a moral responsibility as a nation to provide adequate financial aid, healthcare, and legal and social support to all Canadian families facing Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias.

The scope of the looming medical care disaster is beyond compare. By 2050, the world population over age 60 will be two billion. The risk of dementia doubles with every five-year increment past age 65. The World Health Organization has called on governments to implement national dementia plans. Canada has yet to even get started on a plan.

The 2012 report “Dementia: a public health priority”, published by the World Health Organization and Alzheimer’s Disease International, recommends that programmes focus on: raising public awareness about the disease and reducing stigma; improving early diagnosis; and providing better care and more support to caregivers.

In Canada we must plan for the impact of dementia by: promoting a dementia-friendly society; making dementia a national public health and social care priority; improving public and professional attitudes to, and understanding of, dementia, replicating some of the evidence-based approaches and solutions already adopted by countries to tackle dementia, and particularly, prioritizing research, and raising awareness about prevention; promoting early diagnosis and management; strengthening workforce training and capacity; and implementing responsive care and health service delivery, especially for caregivers.

The government must recognize that dementia is the primary cause of long-term care institutionalization among elderly Canadians. Persons with dementia are currently being cared for in locations that can be prohibitively expensive (e.g., emergency departments, hospitals, and long-term care). The government’s own report shows that the crisis in hospital alternate level of care cannot be solved without a community-based dementia strategy, designed to keep persons with dementia safely at home for as long as possible.

Moving care from acute care and long-term care to the community could enable many people suffering from dementia to have an improved quality of life. Moreover, a community-based dementia strategy would decrease emergency department overcrowding, reduce hospitalizations, and delay long-term bed placement. As a result, more hospital beds would be available, hospital overcrowding would be decreased, wait times would improve, fewer nursing homes would need to be built, and the system would save money.

The government has the opportunity to change the course of dementia now. A variety of disease-modifying treatments exist, but shrinking investment in research threatens breakthroughs. Investing in research to end dementia is one of the most rational decisions a government can make. It not only saves lives but also saves money by reducing the burden on healthcare.

The government must commit to those living with the disease and those who care for them; it must ensure they will never have to face dementia alone, or become financially insecure as a result.