The Global Health Observatory
Explore a world of health data
WHO/Cathy Greenblat
The Global Dementia Observatory (GDO) is the monitoring and accountability mechanism for the Global action plan on the public response to dementia 2017-25. It collates data from WHO Member States on 35 key dementia indicators to strengthen countries’ ability to respond to the needs of people with dementia, their carers and families.
The 35 GDO indicators and sub-indicators build a comprehensive logic model that can track progress across the seven strategic areas of the Global dementia action plan, including all recommended dementia actions at national, regional and global levels. Specifically, a core set of GDO indicators is used to measure individual countries’ contributions towards achieving the global targets of the Global dementia action plan.
As of August 2021, 62 countries have contributed data to the GDO during the first round of data collection (2018-2020). The next round of GDO data collection is planned to commence in 2022.
Key figures
People living with dementia
55.2 million
people currently live with dementia
Dementia-related deaths
65%
of people dying of dementia-related deaths are women
- In 2019, the total global societal cost of dementia was estimated to be US$ 1.3 trillion
- DALYs from Alzheimer’s disease have more than doubled between 2000 and 2019.
- In 2019, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia ranked as the 7th leading cause of death.
Related topics
More Global dementia observatory data products
Country profiles
Country profiles present selected data, statistics and information to provide national health profiles at given points in time.