This appeared last week:
Dementia set to become Australia’s leading cause of death
Australian Bureau of Statistics says the 250 deaths between heart disease and dementia in 2023 brings the totals ‘the closest they have ever been’
Thu 10 Oct 2024 17.56 AEDT
Dementia is on the brink of overtaking heart disease as the leading cause of death in Australia, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which says the 250 deaths between the two conditions are “the closest they have ever been”.
In 2023, which recorded 183,131 deaths nationally, the five leading causes of death were heart disease, dementia (including Alzheimer’s), cerebrovascular disease, lung cancer and chronic lower respiratory disease, ABS data revealed.
Covid fell to the ninth leading cause of death, from third in 2022.
If mortality trends continue to follow expected trajectories, dementia will be the leading cause of death in Australia “in coming years”, the report said.
Over the past 50 years the mortality rate for ischaemic heart disease (also known as coronary heart disease) decreased by 87.9% while dementia increased by 842.8%.
The ABS noted that in its peak in 1968, heart disease accounted for almost a third of deaths, while dementia accounted for just 0.2%.
Lauren Moran, the ABS head of mortality statistics, attributed the change to improvements in medical treatment and an ageing population.
However, the ABS emphasised dementia is not an inevitable part of the ageing process and can occur at all ages.
Overall, the death rate of 5.13 deaths per 1,000 people in 2023 dropped from 5.48 in 2022.
Deaths from Covid almost halved and rates of death fell for most other leading causes, the bureau said.
Two-thirds of people who died from dementia in 2023 were female. It remains the leading cause of death among women, which the bureau said was due to their greater life expectancy.
The Dementia Australia CEO, Prof Tanya Buchanan, said dementia represents 12.2% of all female deaths and 6.4% of male deaths and the numbers are projected to worsen.
There are now an estimated 421,000 Australians living with dementia, she said.
“Without a significant intervention, this number is expected to increase to more than 812,500 by 2054.
“It is crucial that we act now to focus on the brain health of the nation as well as provide more targeted, effective support to those impacted by dementia.”
Suicide remained the leading cause of premature death in 2023, at a rate of 12.1 per 100,000 people.
Three in four people who died from suicide were male, though men who lived in remote Australia were twice as likely to die from suicide as men in capital cities. The 2023 data for males, though still premature, was higher than 2020 rates.
The median age of people who died by suicide was 45 (compared with 82 for all deaths) though this decreased to 33 among Indigenous Australians.
Indigenous people (30.2 per 100,000) were almost three times as likely to die by suicide as non-Indigenous people (11.3 per 100,000), which Prof Pat Dudgeon, a professor of Indigenous health at University of Western Australia, described as “unacceptable”.
Dudgeon said the data, which likely under represents true numbers, “reinforces the harsh reality that in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities losing loved ones to suicide is not the exception, but tragically common”.
The ABS also found Indigenous people were four times more likely to die unintentionally from drug use and five times more likely to die from diabetes.
In 2023, the median age at death was 82 years. Death rates among those aged 45 were the lowest in the last 10 years, with the death rate for females under 25 decreasing by just over 10% since 2022.
Australia’s National Dementia Helpline is 1800 100 500. The crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Here is the link:
The only point of mentioning this is to say that doing all you can for your brain matters (control blood pressure, stay as fit as you can, avoid head trauma and use your brain when you can etc.) so that at least you brain sees the same distance as your body time wise!
There is little else we can all do but it has to be worth trying to keep it going well!
I hope you agree…
David.
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