350,000 Britons with Dementia remain undiagnosed

Government sources confirmed that Dementia diagnosis rate is just 45per cent.

09:27 16 May 2013

The government has confirmed that currently, the dementia diagnosis rate is just 45per cent. This figure, according to the government is “shockingly low.”

For this reason, the NHS in England has been directed to improve the numbers. The goal is to identify at least two out of the three cases of Dementia.

Aside from increasing diagnosis rate, a senior adviser on public health thinks that prevention can also help to cut the number of people suffering from the disease by half. He said that this can be done through wide-scale mental agility testing.

As the issue has been raised as a priority a year ago in the prime minister’s “challenge on dementia” it is now expected, as shown on the NHS England progress report, that diagnosis rate should increase by 20per cent in the next two years.

Meanwhile, David Cameron is set to leverage Britain’s presidency of the G8 leading industrialised nations to launch an international drive to boost dementia research.

Together with the United States, a plan on launching a joint programme to develop drugs to treat the condition has been agreed on.