麻豆约拍

Few of us will escape the impact of Alzheimer鈥檚 Disease. The grim pay-back from being healthy, wealthy or lucky enough to live into our late eighties and beyond is dementia. One in three鈥攎aybe even one in two of us鈥攚ill get dementia and forget almost everything we ever knew. And the lucky others? They鈥檒l probably end up caring for someone with Alzheimer鈥檚, the most common form of dementia.

But it鈥檚 far more than just a personal family tragedy. It鈥檚 a major economic challenge to governments and health-care providers around the world, and will force some fundamental re-thinking on how we care for sufferers. The costs are already immense. Dementia is now a trillion-dollar disease, and with the numbers of patients doubling every twenty years, the burden will fall unevenly on developing countries where the growth rate is fastest.

We report from South Korea, where the economic miracle on the Han river has turned into a demographic time-bomb. Its fast-ageing low birth-rate dilemma is the most extreme in the world, and with a higher than average rate of dementia sufferers, its success story is under threat. We meet campaigners breaking down the barriers of stigma in Nigeria to convince people that Alzheimer鈥檚 is a disease that everyone needs to care about, because the solutions cannot be provided by governments alone. We hear from the Netherlands, which on the one hand is a world pioneer in innovative and effective health care, but also allows dementia patients to choose euthanasia.

Presented by Andrew Bomford.

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