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Kia ora. Welcome to Alzheimers New Zealand's website
Alzheimers New Zealand is a support and advocacy organisation for people with dementia, their carers, family, whanau and community. Dementia is a neurological disease which affects memory, cognitive function, personality, emotion and quality of life. Throughout this site we use ‘dementia’ as an over-arching word to describe a group of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, frontal-temporal dementia, Pick’s disease and less common types. You can learn more about the different types of dementia here.
Over 43,000 New Zealanders have dementia and this number is set to double every 20 years. This increase is due to the fact that dementia has no cure and New Zealand has an ageing population. Worldwide, dementia is doubling at the same rate, with an estimated 35.6 million people living with dementia throughout the world in 2010.
What we do
We support people with dementia, their whanau and community through 21 local Alzheimers New Zealand organisations. These organisations provide support, advice, information and access to local support services. They also give people a chance to meet others going through similar situations. Some of our local organisations offer day-care programmes, support and friendship groups for people affected by the disease and memory management courses.
At a national level, Alzheimers New Zealand lobbies the Government for better dementia-related support services and advocates for the best possible treatment of people with dementia in the community, in residential care and within the health system. Our vision is for society to recognise, value and support people with dementia while our mission is to make life better for all people affected by dementia.
Our vision focuses on meeting the needs of people with dementia throughout all aspects of their life. This means working toward person-centred care and calling on people with dementia to influence the way care and support is developed in New Zealand’s health and community care sector.
At the same time, our mission is to make life better for all people affected by the disease, which means supporting and educating both people with dementia and their carers and families to make the right decisions through informed and supported choices.
As part of our People, Policy, Partnership conference in May 2010 in Wellington we launched a National Dementia Strategy, which called upon cross-sector collaboration between the government, health service providers, medical professionals, people with dementia and their families and whanau and community organisations to achieve long term benefits for all people coping with the disease.
To find out more about what we do please click here.
