-Vijay Kumar Dhingra
In the afternoon of September 26th, I sat in a conference hall listening to doctors, policy thinkers, and care administrators at a symposium organized by Hope Ek Asha, an organization dedicated to Alzheimer’s and dementia care. As the discussion unfolded, an unsettling realization settled over the room: we are quietly drifting into a public health crisis of catastrophic proportions, and our society is largely looking the other way.
The figures presented that morning are staggering. Currently, an estimated 88 lakh people in India live with Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Within just a single decade, that number is expected to double. Behind that statistical projection lies a deep reservoir of human anguish.
Alzheimer’s is not an illness that confines itself to a single patient; it engulfs an entire family. Caring for someone whose memory, personality, and sense of reality are eroding requires relentless, twenty-four-hour vigilance. It is a slow, exhausting vigil that drains family caregivers of their physical energy, emotional reserves, and financial savings. Yet, specialized residential care centres are scarce, largely confined to a few tier-one cities, and priced well beyond the reach of an ordinary household.
Outside our metropolitan pockets, the tragedy takes a darker turn. In rural India, cognitive decline is rarely recognized as a neurological disorder. Memory loss, disorientation, and unpredictable behavioural shifts are frequently dismissed as mere senility or worse, blamed on supernatural influences. Families, desperate and uninformed, often exhaust their meagre savings seeking remedies from occult practitioners while the underlying condition deteriorates unchecked.
At the same time, modern daily habits are quietly compounding the vulnerability of our minds. Hours spent lost in the passive glare of social media screens, declining physical activity, and shrinking face-to-face community life are eroding the very habits that maintain cognitive health. When we outsource even the simplest arithmetic to a smartphone, our minds surrender the small, daily exercises that once built mental resilience.
If we are to face this coming tidal wave, our response must begin long before a diagnosis is ever made.
Prevention must become an everyday ethic. We need to intentionally rebuild habits of active socializing, step away from digital isolation, and encourage daily physical movement. Simple, forgotten habits matter: challenging the brain with reading, solving problems, and returning to everyday mental calculations keeps our neural pathways active and engaged far into our later years.
Alongside prevention, we must shatter the silence and superstition surrounding the disease through sustained public education. Prime-time television and mass media should regularly broadcast short, informative features and clear messages that teach ordinary citizens how to spot the early warning signs of cognitive decline. At the grassroots level, our frontline healthcare personnel must be trained to recognize dementia, dispel occult myths, and steer families toward clinical help. Simple, standardized memory tests should become as routine during a visit to a Primary Health Centre or district hospital as checking blood pressure.
Finally, we must reform the way medical and institutional care is delivered. General physicians across rural and semi-urban clinics need structured upskilling to diagnose cognitive disorders early and safely prescribe foundational psychiatric medications, ensuring these drugs are consistently available on dispensary shelves. Simultaneously, we must develop a recognized, regulated cadre of certified caregivers so families have access to dependable, affordable support at home. Crucially, the healthcare system and insurance sector must come together to bring memory care and long-term caregiving under standard insurance coverage, ensuring that dignified care does not drive a family into financial ruin.
A civilization is judged by how gently it holds those who once held everything together. The estimated numbers will not wait for our readiness. It is time to treat dementia not as an inevitable private tragedy behind closed doors, but as a collective priority demanding our immediate compassion, policy action, and national resolve.
