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The Documentary: Solving Alzheimer's: Living and Dying with Alzheimer’s

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Living and Dying with Alzheimer’s

29/01/2019 GMT

Solving Alzheimer's

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Solving Alzheimer's, Living and Dying with Alzheimer’s

How best to live and die with dementia and the difficult choices people have to make

How best to live and die with dementia and the difficult choices people have to make.

In the final episode of this three-part series we explore the difficult choices people have to make. In the Netherlands, people with dementia can legally chose euthanasia but the debate is going back and forth there. When can dementia patients consent to euthanasia? The answer it turns out - is ethically very complicated and a Dutch doctor is now being prosecuted for performing euthanasia on a patient with advanced Alzheimer’s. 
But if we didn’t fear Alzheimer's so much, couldn't we find ways to live a happy, fulfilled life - even with dementia? We travel to South Korea and the UK to hear from some of the most promising initiatives; and how a dementia friendly society is possible, with action not just from governments and NGOs but crucially from all of us. 

Presenter: Andrew Bomford
Series producer: Estelle Doyle
Editor: Emma Rippon

(Image: Care, Credit: Getty Images)

The Documentary: Solving Alzheimer's

No one will escape Alzheimer’s. Here’s what you need to know.

Few of us will escape the impact of Alzheimer’s 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—maybe even one in two of us—will get dementia and forget almost everything we ever knew. And the lucky others? They’ll probably end up caring for someone with Alzheimer’s, the most common form of dementia.

But it’s far more than just a personal family tragedy. It’s 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’s 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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