Professor Matthew Kiernan

So while that's been happening, and then obviously all the great advances in cancer because of molecular biology, understanding genetics, the whole human genome, all of these things are getting well understood, and no one has really focused on, inverted commas, dementia.

And I suppose as a community, we've often thought that it's an elderly people's condition, and we didn't really care about it, and okay, if we end up a bit demented in a nursing home, that's the cost of living.

But really what's happened alarmingly is it's really come to the fore.

And we're seeing there's a huge amount of dementia and neurodegeneration.

And in fact, this geographical region, the Western Pacific, carries three-fifths, so 60% of the world burden.

What?

Yeah.

And it's going to be a massive cost.

We're talking about the budget.

What is that?

Well, I think it's an unusual sort of racial mix, but we've got obviously a lot of Asian populations.

We've got South Pacific Islanders.

Obviously, we've got the Anglos from Western Europe.

But it's a huge population, firstly, and they're prone to vascular, particularly related neuro problems, dementia, vascular dementia in particular.

And also, I suppose, there's a lot of underdeveloped regions.

So if we think about our neighboring countries, we've been very lucky, and Australia's lucky, and there's Japan and Korea.

But then it's mixed with great poverty, Thailand, Myanmar, Burma,

Thailand, Indonesia, all at huge populations.

So the focus globally is to try and fix up the Western Pacific and then take some of the learnings from the Western Pacific and do refinements, particularly in Western Europe and North America.

So as a neurologist, obviously I'm a bit prejudiced.