September 21st each year is honoured as a day where Alzheimer’s organizations worldwide direct their efforts towards raising awareness about Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
Liz McLeod, Senior Manager for the Alzheimer's Society of Manitoba, goes into detail about Dementia and Alzheimer's,
"Dementia is an umbrella diagnosis, its sort of like cancer is an umbrella diagnosis as well, but there is many different specific kinds of cancer, and with dementia, there's different kinds as well, there's the more well-known Alzheimer's disease and many other sub kinds, but most of the public knows dementia and knows Alzheimer's and they are sort of the same thing. Dementia kind of covers a broad range of illnesses."
McLeod breaks down where we are and where we are heading,
"More than 23,000 Manitobans have a diagnosis of dementia, and this number is rapidly growing, and by 2038 it's expected to reach over 40,700 Manitobans, and the main reason for that is because of the baby boomer population all ageing at the same time."
She carried on to talk about one of the reasons why there have been more diagnoses in the past few years,
"The medical system is getting better at diagnosing dementia earlier, whether that's because of specific tests, like cats scans, MRI's more specialist possibly, but they are getting better at diagnosing dementia, so you are going to see high numbers from that."
The Senior Manager for the Alzheimer's Society of Manitoba lists some symptoms associated with the disease,
"Your short term in particular memory fades, and your unable to remember things that you could remember before, there's also changes in confusion, becoming disoriented, so sometimes people, as they progress through the disease, get lost, and there can be changes in mood in behaviour."
62% of Manitobans are impacted by dementia, whether that be with a family member or friend.
For more information on stats, symptoms and more, go to the Alzheimer's Society of Manitoba website by clicking here.
