The new pandemic

Time to hide under the kitchen table

Whisper it quietly, but there is a new pandemic stalking the world. It is one unknown to many, and one for which no government has a contingency plan.

Between 1990 and 2015, the date of the most recent relevant report[1], the number afflicted doubled from 3M to over 6M globally. The authors projected that number to rise to about 17M by 2040.

The disease is Parkinson’s.

As all Parkinsonians will know, there are about 150,000 of us in the UK, an incidence of about 1:500. However, there is an essential lack of understanding which masks the true scale of the problem. Briefly put, it is the effect of changing demographics.

Parkinson’s is a disease which predominantly affects the over 60’s, and thus the impact of it within that ‘cohort’ is much greater proportionally than across the population as a whole. It is what is happening to this cohort which needs to be understood. The ONS projects it to grow by over 30% over the next thirty years, and even this could be an underestimate in the event of something like a ban on smoking, or added efforts in preventative medicine.

What does this mean? Again from the report, people being born in 2015 could expect an incidence not of 1:500, but of 1:37. Given that ten years have elapsed since these calculations were run, that could well be down to 1:35 by now. The impact on the UK could be gravely damaging.

The sad truth is that Government does not seem to be planning for Parkinson’s in any way whatever, not even at 1:500. There has been no discussion of accessibility, for example. The press are today quoting the new head of the NHS as saying that they want all patients to use the NHS app. Has nobody told him that most Parkinsonians are incapable of using an i-Phone in this way?

It is hard to imagine a society in which 1 in 35 of us have Parkinson’s. Where are the carers going to come from? Where is the money for consultants’ appointments and diagnostic scans (each DAT scan costs the NHS £1,500) going to come from? Where are the consultants (it already takes a year to get to see one on the NHS) going to come from? The nursing care? The scanner operatives (a highly skilled task)? What about step free access to buildings and public transport?

The cost will be enormous, yet how are those few people left in employment going to able to support any significant amount by way of taxes?

Government needs to frame and answer a number of very tough questions on this issue, and they need to do it now. As General Patton said, a mediocre plan executed today is better than an excellent plan to be executed at some time in the indefinite future.

Their current attitude reminds me of a government information film which we were shown at school in the early 1970s giving advice as to what to do in the event of nuclear attack. So far as I remember it, this consisted of sticking brown paper to your windows and hiding under the kitchen table.

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[1] Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, Dorsey et al (2015)