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Dementia poised to become our No.1 killer as Covid takes back seat

Heart disease is still Australia's biggest killer, but dementia will soon take over.

Heart disease is still Australia's biggest killer, but dementia will soon take over. Photo: Getty

In 2022, Australia’s third biggest killer was Covid-19.

In 2023, Covid-19 dropped to ninth place in the top 10 causes of death in Australia, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released on Thursday.

We can’t conclude that the coronavirus is dead and buried. A new highly-infectious strain is making itself known. People are still dying in significant numbers.

But according to the ABS, deaths from Covid-19 almost halved, dropping from 9862 in 2022 to 5001 in 2023, while numbers and rates of death fell for most other leading causes.

“Despite these drops, virus-related deaths and mortality rates from all causes were still higher than in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we saw record low mortality rates,” ABS head of mortality statistics Lauren Moran said.

Heart disease the biggest killer

For many decades, coronary heart disease – also known ischemic heart disease – has been the single leading cause of death in Australia.

It first took the No.1 spot – the classic heart attack – when infectious disease was largely controlled by antibiotics and improved hygiene practices.

That was about a century ago.

From the 60s onward, deaths from clogged arteries began to decline as smoking slowly went out of vogue. Still, it has remained our No.1 killer.

That’s about to change. The ABS on Thursday released a national mortality snapshot – the top 10 causes of death for 2023.

Ischemic heart disease once again clung to the No.1 spot – by a less than a trifling 250 deaths.

Hot on its heels is “dementia including Alzheimer’s’.

With Australia’s ageing population it was bound to happen – despite our high rate of obesity, the growing number of young cancer deaths and high exercise-resistance.

The biggest risk factor for dementia is age.

Moran said that the ABS had “seen a drop in heart disease mortality and a rise in dementia deaths over time associated with both improvements in medical treatment and health care, and an ageing population”.

“This is changing our leading causes of death,” she said.

The latest data, she said, showed there were now less than 250 deaths separating the top two leading causes.

Heart diseases were the cause of 9.2 per cent of deaths, while dementia, which includes Alzheimer’s disease, accounted for 9.1 per cent of deaths in 2023.

Moran said dementia had been the leading cause of death for women since 2016, making up 12.2 per cent of female deaths. In 2023, it accounted for 6.4 per cent of male deaths.

“Women have longer life expectancies than men and as such are more likely to live to an age when they have a heightened risk of developing dementia,” she said.

“Dementia is also the leading cause of death in South Australia, the ACT and, for the first time, NSW.”

Overall, the national mortality rate has stabilised. The mortality rate was 5.13 deaths per 1,000 people, down from 5.48 in 2022.

Booze and suicide

Moran said alcohol “continued to be a significant burden on mortality, with 1667 deaths in 2023”.

This meant an alcohol-related death rate of 5.6 per 100,000 people, down from 6.2 in 2022, but similar to that recorded in 2021, she said.

Between 2018 and 2022, the alcohol related death rate rose steadily from 4.7 to 6.2.

There were 3214 people who died by suicide in 2023 (a rate of 12.1 per 100,000 people), “with men making up around three quarters of those deaths”.

The median age at death for people who died by suicide was 45.5, “which means suicide was the leading cause of premature death in 2023”.

If you or someone you know requires assistance or support, call Lifeline (131 114) or beyondblue (1300 224 636)

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