New dementia sufferer every three seconds as treatment costs to hit €1tn

Every three seconds someone in the world develops dementia, with a global report warning the annual cost of the disease will top €1 trillion by 2018.

Experts believe they underestimated the current and future scale of the dementia epidemic by 12%-13% in the 2009 World Alzheimer Report, with costs growing more rapidly than the numbers of people affected.

To put it into perspective, the huge worldwide cost of dementia means that if it were a country it would be the world’s 18th largest economy — more than the market value of companies such as Google and Apple.