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Health Check: Is Dementia Going to be the Massive Problem we Anticipate?

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26/08/2015 GMT

Is Dementia Going to be the Massive Problem we Anticipate?

BBC World Service - Health Check, Is Dementia Going to be the Massive Problem we Anticipate?

A new study finds age-specific dementia prevalence is falling in parts of Western Europe.

Why dementia rates are falling in Western Europe; novel scheme paying children to use public toilets in India; Novelist Matt Haig discusses his book on recovering from depression.

According to a new report, the number of people with dementia is levelling off in some parts of Western Europe. Studies in Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and Spain compared recent rates of dementia in different age groups with the rates twenty to thirty years ago, and it was found that a smaller proportion of people are now developing the disease. One of the report’s authors is Professor Ingmar Skoog, Director of the Centre for Aging and Health, or AgeCap, at Gothenburg University in Sweden.

Paid to pee
Open defecation is a practice where people relieve themselves in fields, forests or other open spaces rather than using a toilet. Despite efforts to improve sanitation, India accounts for almost 60% of the 1.1 billion people in the world who continue to defecate in the open. It poses a serious threat to health, particularly for children, spreading disease that causes sickness, malnutrition and death.
The Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged to end the habit by 2019; an ambitious target. But schemes like the one taking place in the state of Gujarat may help, as the BBC’s Suranjana Tewari reports.

Recovering from depression
A memoir about depression and anxiety that also aims to make you laugh has become a surprise bestseller in the book charts. It is called Reasons to Stay Alive and is about the depression novelist Matt Haig experienced 13 years ago when he was 24. 



(Picture: Dementia patient doing art therapy. Credit: Getty Images)

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