John Elflein
Research expert covering health and health care
Dementia and Alzheimer's disease in Canada - Statistics & Facts
In 2020, it was estimated that around 9.7 percent of women and 6.9 percent of men in Canada aged 65 years and older were living with dementia. By the year 2050, these figures are expected to increase to around 15.3 percent for women and 10.6 percent for men. As life expectancy and the share of the elderly population in a country increase so does the prevalence of dementia, with this syndrome creating a substantial burden on families, caregivers, and health systems. Dementia does not refer to a specific disease but is a term used to describe a set of symptoms including a decline in memory, planning, judgment, and language that interfere with everyday activities. Some of the most common types of dementia are Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Lewy body disease, and fronto-temporal dementia. However, Alzheimer’s disease is by far the most common form of dementia, accounting for an estimated 60 to 80 percent of cases. Age is the strongest risk factor for dementia, but other risk factors include a family history of dementia, high blood pressure, smoking tobacco, excessive alcohol use, a lack of physical exercise, obesity, and diabetes.
How many people in Canada have dementia?
In Canada, there are predicted to be almost 1.5 million new cases of dementia between 2020 and 2029. It was estimated that in 2020 around 368,200 adults in Canada had Alzheimer’s disease, while a further 156,400 suffered from vascular dementia, and 116,800 from other forms of dementia. By the year 2050, it’s forecast that over 1.1 million people in Canada will have Alzheimer’s disease. The province with the highest number of people living with dementia is Ontario, followed by Quebec and British Columbia. However, the province that is expected to see the largest increase in the number of people living with dementia between 2020 and 2050 is Alberta. Over that period Alberta is expected to see a 286 percent increase in the number of people with dementia, while British Columbia and Ontario are also both expected to experience increases of over 200 percent.Deaths from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease
In 2022, an estimated 16,382 women and 9,612 men in Canada died due to dementia. Unsurprisingly, those aged 90 years and older accounted for the vast majority of these deaths. Alzheimer’s disease was the ninth leading cause of death in Canada at that time, with almost two percent of deaths resulting from the disease. However, the death rate for Alzheimer’s has actually decreased in recent years. In 2022, the death rate for Alzheimer’s disease in Canada was 13.9 per 100,000 population, compared to a rate of 18.3 per 100,000 in 2017. There is currently no cure for dementia, but there are medications to help manage symptoms and there are a number of drugs to treat these neurodegenerative diseases that are currently in clinical trials. As dementia becomes more prevalent among the growing elderly population in Canada it will be essential to have accessible and affordable long term care options and a workforce that is appropriately trained and compensated to care for those suffering from these terrible debilitating conditions.
