Almost one in eight people died of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in England and Wales in 2018, according to the latest mortality figures, making it the leading cause of death.
The increase in the proportion of those dying from dementia and Alzheimer’s is a result of people living longer and surviving other illnesses, said the Office for National Statistics (ONS) report.
The proportion of those dying from the diseases has increased for the fourth consecutive year: up from 12.7% in 2017 to 12.8% in 2018. There were 541,589 deaths registered in England and Wales last year, the highest total since 1999.
The increase in deaths from dementia, based on registered cause of death by age, sex, underlying causes of death and the leading cause of death, is also likely to be a result of a better understanding of the disease and improved diagnosis thanks to initiatives put in place in recent years.
David Cameron launched his so-called challenge on dementia in 2013. His government’s mandate to NHS England included an ambition that two-thirds of the estimated number of people with dementia in England should have a diagnosis.
Death rates from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease continue to be much higher for women than men. For men in England and Wales, the leading cause of death – at 13.2% of all reported deaths – remains ischaemic heart disease. Dementia and Alzheimer’s are only the principle cause of death for men aged 80 and above, responsible for 15.1% of fatalities.
For women in England and Wales, however, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease is the leading cause of death across all ages: representing 16.7% of all reported deaths and rising to 23.6% for women aged over 80 years old.
The ONS statistics for 2018 showed a continuation of the trend since 1980 for male life expectancy to improve at a slightly faster rate than female life expectancy. This, the research suggested, indicated the gap in life expectancy between men and women was likely to close in the next few years.
Both the regional and local authority-level ONS data also show that London has the lowest mortality rates for males and females for the second year in a row. London also has the highest increase in life expectancy of all regions in England.
Among English local authorities, Blackpool had the highest rate per 100,000 of male deaths in 2018 at 1,553.1 and the City of London had the lowest rate at 493,5.
The lowest rate of death for females was also in the City of London, at 346.5 per 100,000 while the highest was in Stoke-on-Trent, which had the highest rate of female deaths at 1,174.3 per 100,000.
The mortality rates are the most in-depth reported: by merging to publications for the first time – Deaths Registered in England and Wales (series DR) and the Deaths Registered in England and Wales (summary tables) – the ONS has been able to take into account population size and age structure.
The statistics show that although mortality rates have generally been decreasing, since the early 2010s there has been a significant slowdown in mortality improvements.
Despite this slowdown, however, and the higher number of deaths recorded in 2018, age-standardised mortality rates for men continued to decline while rates for women has increased by only 0.1% compared with 2017 figures.
