Many have called today D-Day! The Minister for Mental Health and Ageing, Mark Butler, and federal Minister for Health, Tanya Plibersek, formally proposed that dementia be made a National Health Priority Area (NHPA) at a meeting of all state and territory health ministers in Sydney. Alzheimer’s Australia and the almost 300,000 people living with a diagnosis of dementia and their families are more than eager to hear the decision of this committee at or after 4pm. If Australia’s health ministers agree to instating dementia as a National Health Priority, the disease will bear equal importance to cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular health in terms of government policy and funding. To do so would also mean a back-flip on national health policy, given that the government Dementia Initiative – called Helping Australians with Dementia and their Carers – Making Dementia a National Health Priority and introduced in 2005 – ceased in 2011, making me feel less than confident as politicians are usually loathe to do back-flips an anything, especially when it is going to cost them more!! If we get a YES, moving forward with improving diagnosis, research, treatment of and care will have to improve, and it will help bring the disease out of the closet. Alzheimer’s Australia has been campaigning tirelessly since 2011 backdown, and will rightly deserve our very loud applause. It’s almost 4pm (Sydney time) so the decision has been made… all we have to do it WAIT!
Here is a video on YouTube made to support the campaign for dementia being a National Health Priority;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3ZNcK758ZY&list=FLd6Dy9B730BZ3GlbkLfJy2A&feature=plcp
And in an update of this blog, I am pleased to say my cynicism was proven wrong today…
better late than never
As someone with a form of dementia who’s also had cancer I was always “angry” that cancer (especially things like breast cancer) and heart disease got so much more attention that dementia …… hopefully this will be the start of something new.
Thanks for letting us know, Kate!