Geoff Huggins, Florence Lustman, Antoni Montserrat Moliner, Maurice O’Connell, Glenn Rees

In the 2006 Paris Declaration, Alzheimer Europe and its member organisations called upon national governments to “recognise Alzheimer’s disease as a major public health challenge and develop (…) national action programmes.” This was further supported by Alzheimer Europe’s recommendations on the provision of social support to people with dementia and carers, which also called upon governments to “set up national action plans for dementia care and set aside the necessary funds to implement them.”

Since the adoption of the Paris Declaration, Alzheimer plans or dementia strategies have been developed in Denmark, France, Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland) whilst some governments have identified the need for such a plan to be developed (Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Switzerland and Northern Ireland).

In this round table discussion, we will have the opportunity to contrast the approaches taken or envisaged in Australia, France, Ireland and Scotland. The discussion will be moderated by Gleen Rees, Chief Executive of Alzheimer’s Australia with the participation of Geoff Huggins, Deputy Director of Health and Social Care Integration (Scotland), Florence Lustman, who is in charge of the Alzheimer’s Plan (France), Antoni Montserrat Moliner, Policy Officer at the European Commission and Maurice O’Connell, Chief Executive of the Alzheimer Society (Ireland).