Alzheimer Europe: Five-country Survey of Carers Highlights Continuing Delays in Dementia Diagnosis Across Countries

- Today, at the 27th Alzheimer Europe Conference in Berlin, Prof. Bob Woods (Bangor University, Wales, United Kingdom) presented the top line results of a five-country survey on the experience of 1,409 carers of a diagnosis of dementia. Amongst the key reported findings      (Logo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/565398/Alzheimer_Europe_Logo.jpg ) When presenting the findings, Prof. Bob Woods highlighted: "Over 1,400 carers provided invaluable insights into their experiences of the diagnosis of dementia. We were particularly interested to see whether there were differences between people who had been diagnosed more recently (after 2013) compared to those who had been diagnosed earlier. Several countries have dementia strategies and there is growing public and professional awareness. It was encouraging to see that medical professionals were less likely to be a barrier to diagnosis in all countries with the number of professionals considering that nothing was wrong decreasing from 36.8% to 28.7%. We will of course further analyse these results and present them in a scientific paper later this year." Welcoming the results, Jean Georges, Executive Director of Alzheimer Europe said: "Thanks to the participating carers, we are better able to understand the existing barriers which exist across Europe which delay people with dementia and their carers getting a timely diagnosis. The differences across Europe show however that each national system will need to identify specific measures to improve diagnosis rates". Notes to editors:  Alzheimer Europe is the umbrella organisation of national Alzheimer associations and currently has 39 member organisations in 34 European countries. (http://www.alzheimer-europe.org). The five-country carers' survey was conducted in the Czech Republic, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom (Scotland) and was made possible thanks to an educational grant from Roche to Alzheimer Europe, The survey was developed by Prof. Bob Woods from the University of Bangor (Wales, United Kingdom) in collaboration with representatives from Alzheimer Europe, Alzheimer Nederland, Alzheimer Scotland, the Czech Alzheimer's Society, Federazione Alzheimer Italia and the Finnish Alzheimer's Society. The survey was available in five European languages in both on-line and paper versions. The link to the on-line survey was distributed through the participating national Alzheimer's association and the paper version made available on request or mailed out according to local circumstances. The paper version was not used in the Netherlands. The plan was to achieve a target of 200 completed carer surveys in each of the 5 participating countries. In the end, this number was exceed in each country. On-line surveys Paper surveys TOTAL Scotland 211 16 227 Italy 193 146 339 Netherlands 268 268 Finland 356 7 363 Czech Republic 150 62 212 TOTAL 1178 231 1409