Women and Alzheimer’s

The spotlight on Alzheimer’s impact on women is being shown through a recently published report by Maria Shriver – The Shriver Report. I encourage you to visit the website for the details and to the report.

This well done reports reveals that 66% of Alzheimer’s s and over 60% of Alzheimer’s caregivers are women.  Taken from the website, ask these numbers are astounding:

• 10 million women either have Alzheimer’s or are caring for someone with it.
• Women constitute about two-thirds of those who suffer from Alzheimer’s and also about 60 percent of the caregivers for those who have it.
• A third of women caregivers are caring 24/7 for a person with Alzheimer’s. Nearly 40 percent say they had no choice in becoming a caregiver.
• The societal impact of Alzheimer’s disease—on government, families and business—totals about $300 billion per year.
• Almost two-thirds of all working caregivers report having to go to work late, leave early or take time off to provide care. Yet they get less support for elder care than they do for child care. So it’s not surprising that nearly half of all women caregivers report high emotional and physical stress.

The site goes on to note:

Last year, The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything revealed a major tipping point: Working women emerged as primary breadwinners for millions of households as their presence grew to comprise fully half of all workers. This new report makes it clear that women are in the midst of an even more far-reaching transformation in which they work, raise kids, care for the elderly, drive consumer decisions and may suffer emotional and physical stress because of it all.

The impact of Alzheimer’s is stunning on a broader scale as well. The economic cost, as the report shows, is now about $300 billion a year and could triple in coming decades. As Maria Shriver points out, with 78 million baby boomers now moving into their later years, the cost of Alzheimer’s to American society is expected to be $20 trillion between now and 2050. And while annual per- costs of Alzheimer’s is $56,800, the lion’s share of these costs, 60 percent, is borne by families.

ABC News is focusing on this report the week of October 18th on Good Morning America and the ABC Evening News. This is an interview Shriver did on ABC’s This Week Sunday, October 17th.

The call to action based on this report is to make Alzheimer’s a national priority, fund research and raise awareness of the impact of women in Alzheimer’s. The report makes a compelling case:

Based on the most recently available data, annual federal funding for cancer is about $6 billion, for cardiovascular disease about $4 billion and for HIV/AIDS about $3 billion. These are all important investments that should continue based on their high returns in lives saved.19 Not counting the one-time stimulus funds, total federal funding for Alzheimer research is just $469 million.

Alzheimer’s must be a national priority. I’m encouraged by the White House Briefing on the Challenge of Alzheimer’s Disease in the United States in which I participated on World Alzheimer’s Day, Sept. 21, 2010. I believe it was a good step by this administration toward what we need: a real and sustained effort to change the course of Alzheimer’s. But today, our federal government—in fact, our country as a whole—is not prepared for the worsening Alzheimer disaster.

We aren’t funding enough research to stop it. We don’t have a plan for handling the surging cost of care if it isn’t stopped. We don’t have enough residential care facilities for that inevitable point in the disease process when even the most dedicated caregivers can no longer handle the care at home. Do the math: Without even considering the human effects, Alzheimer’s disease will cost our nation $1 trillion a year when a baby born in 2010 turns 40.20 And, we’re spending less than $500 million a year to avoid those costs. Should we invest more now to stop it, or wait and let that little baby pay the costs 40 years later? The answer is clear.

You can make a difference today through making a donation to support research where 100% of your donation goes to funding Alzheimer’s research at The Cure Alzheimer’s Fund. Or sign the petition sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Association for Congress to fund the National Alzheimer’s Project Act.

Thank you,
Alan