LAHORE: With around 400,000 dementia patients in Pakistan and counting, the Punjab government in collaboration with the World Health Organisation (WHO) has launched the first Punjab Dementia Plan to initiate transformation towards ensuring comprehensive dementia services at all stages.

Dementia is one of the grave health challenges of this generation and seventh leading cause of death globally. In Pakistan, it is estimated the percentage of projected increase in the number of these cases is to be 261 per cent, which will carry huge social and economic cost to the community and the government.

The Punjab Dementia Plan was launched by Parvez Elahi after Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid gave a briefing and presented the [dementia plan] book to him at chief minister’s office on Wednesday.

The chief minister said the most worrying thing about this disease was that 90pc of dementia patients were not diagnosed and become a liability for the family as well as for the society.

He said the number of dementia patients, who lose memory, was alarmingly increasing and it was time that the society too should fulfill the responsibility to treat elderly people suffering from this disease.

He said Punjab had become the first province where a dementia plan had been introduced and hoped that other provinces would follow suit.

Mr Elahi stressed that adequate measures needed to treat dementia so that the patient and his family could be supported.

Alzheimer’s Pakistan Secretary General Dr Hussain Jafri said there were seven core action areas of the plan that included dementia as a public health priority; awareness and friendliness; risk reduction; diagnosis, treatment, care and support; information systems for dementia; and dementia research and innovation.

Health Minister Dr Rashid said dementia had become a grave health and social crisis in Pakistan and added that the plan “will help us in setting up the required services for diagnosis, treatment and deliver dementia services across the province.”

Alzheimer’s Pakistan President Zia H. Rizvi and others attended the launch event.

Later, talking to the media, the chief minister said the government would ensure that people be sensitised to dementia. Reiterating his concern about Islamabad’s denial to provide wheat to Punjab, Mr Elahi commented that the PML-N government had supposedly also suffered from dementia disease because it did not respond to his requests made around six times to resolve the wheat issue. “The Punjab government will treat them and give them medicines for free,” he said.

Mr Elahi said the ‘dementia-affected’ federal government gave wheat to Sindh and other provinces but forgot to give wheat to Punjab.

Published in Dawn, October 20th, 2022