Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease biggest causes of death among women, Office for National Statistics figures find
11:39AM GMT 29 Oct 2014
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The scale of Britain’s dementia crisis is exposed in official figures showing that the number of deaths in which it was the underlying cause jumped by seven per cent in a single year.
Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are now the biggest cause of death among women and ranked third after heart disease and cancer for men.
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that dementia was the underlying cause in one in eight female deaths and one in 16 among men, although the gap between the genders is narrowing.
Overall dementia-related conditions were responsible for 47,112 deaths registered in England and Wales last year, an increase of seven per cent on 2012.
The figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the total number of deaths in England and Wales last year edged 1.5 per cent higher to 506,790 – the first time it has topped 500,000 for six years.
Despite the rise in the total number, the death rate as a proportion of the total population has fallen by around a fifth in the last decade as people live longer.
Although women traditionally live longer than men, the figures provide further evidence that men are gradually narrowing the gap as a result of changes in lifestyles in recent decades.
The age standardised death rate fell by 19 per cent in the last decade among women, but 22 per cent among men.
During that time, the death rate from circulatory diseases almost halved for both men and women.
But the proportion of men dying as a result of dementia related conditions trebled from just two per cent to 6.2 per cent. Meanwhile among women it more than doubled from 4.7 per cent of deaths to 12.2 per cent.
Gavin Terry, policy manager at the Alzheimer’s Society said: "With 225,000 people developing dementia every year and numbers set to soar, dementia is one of the biggest health and social care challenges the UK faces.
"For too long dementia has been wrongly seen by many clinicians as a natural part of ageing and, as such, have failed to record it as a cause of death. Increasing awareness of the condition has started to combat this, and these figures are likely to be a product of that.
"We often hear of people with dementia not dying in the manner they want to. Staff working with people with dementia who might be nearing the end of their lives need to receive specific training so they can provide the best care possible and support those with dementia to die with dignity."
The ONS said in a commentary that part of the increase could be the result of different ways of recording and categorising causes of death but that it was also a trend clearly linked to the ageing population.
“Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia. Deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease are increasing as people live longer, with women living longer than men,” it explained.
“Some of the rise over the last few decades may also be attributable to a better understanding of dementia.
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