Number of ill pensioners to rise
Updated on 13 January 2009
Millions more older people will be living with a long-term illness by 2025, a charity warned.
Coronary heart disease, osteoporosis and dementia are just some of the conditions people will be battling with in later years, according to data from the charity Help the Aged.
And it warned that figures will continue to go up as people live longer than ever before and pensioners make up a greater proportion of the population.
The data from the research arm of Help the Aged, Research into Ageing, found that the number of people living with long-term illnesses will rise dramatically from now on.
The estimated number of people living with the effects of stroke, which mostly strikes people over the age of 60, will rise around 46%, from 601,000 now to 878,000 in 2025.
Those living with late-onset dementia will go up 50% from 668,000 to a million and those with incontinence will go from more than three million now to around 4.1 million, a rise of 37%.
The number of people living with coronary heart disease will rise from 1.8 million now to 2.6 million (an increase of 42%) while the number with osteoporosis will go up 37%, from three million now to 4.1 million in 2025.
At the moment, around 9.7 million people in the UK are over 65, but this will rise 42% to almost 14 million by 2025.
As people live longer, they will spend more years of their life in ill health. Men will live an average of 6.8 years of their life and women will live 9.1 years of their life with a long-term illness.
Dr Lorna Layward, from Research into Ageing, said: "The good news is that we have never lived so long, and never lived so long in good health. But, with an ever ageing population, we are set to see increases in a whole range of distressing diseases, from dementia to incontinence, within a generation."
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