Dementia is Now One of the Ten Deadliest Conditions

Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias have been ranked among the top 10 deadliest conditions by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO lists dementia, based on the figures from 2019. In that year, nearly half a million people died from its effects. In Europe and America, it was the third leading cause of death.

The leading causes of death on the new list are heart failure, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), respiratory tract infections, fatalities in newborn children, respiratory cancer, dementia, diarrhoea, diabetes and kidney disease.

Diabetes is also a newcomer to the list. In ten years, the number of patients who succumbed to it has increased by 70 percent, to 1.5 million patients who died last year.

That number of deaths this year is associated with the new coronavirus. That also has a chance of being on this ‘death list’ next year.