Ahead of Brain Awareness Week next week, a timely report from the Economist Impact focuses on the economic and societal impact of ten common neurological conditions across the UK.
Key findings include:
Around one in six people in the UK is living with at least one neurological condition and that figure looks set to rise. The report focuses on ten common neurological conditions: Alzheimer’s disease, brain cancer, epilepsy, migraines, MS, Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, type 1 SMA, stroke, and traumatic brain injury. The collective number of people with these conditions in the UK comes to 14.5m.
Neurological conditions cost the UK the equivalent of more than 4.3% of its GDP in 2019 or at least £96bn
Existing interventions for the studied diseases substantially reduce this toll. The report looked at a range of specific interventions for each of the 10 neurological conditions. It determined the amenable burden -the extent to which it is possible to reduce the toll of these diseases by adopting the best current practices in preventive, treatment, and rehabilitative interventions.
Direct and indirect costs of neurological conditions can be reduced by about one-third. The amenable economic burden for the ten diseases studied was estimated as 1.4% of GDP in 2019, equivalent to £30.8bn for the UK.
The value of action: mitigating the impact of neurological disorders in the United Kingdom is available to download below.