Electorates with biggest numbers of those living with dementia
A Sydney mother has broken cultural barriers to help hundreds of families understand and manage dementia. Search the number of people living with the disease in your area.
Mother of five Sanna Sartawy is actively working to not only educate people from culturally diverse backgrounds about dementia, but how to seek out the resources and help needed to care for a loved one living with the condition.
The 56-year-old from Chipping Norton in Sydney’s south west knows first-hand the obstacles faced, having cared for her mother Samiha El Merhebe, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Even as one of eight siblings, Ms Sartawy, who is throwing her support behind news.com.au and The Australian’s Think Again campaign, said taking care of her mother was hard.
“Even the doctors would say to us: We know your culture – you go and you take care of your mum and you will do a good job’,” Ms Sartawy said.
“Even the Chinese, the Italian, the Greeks – that’s the feedback I get when I speak to the community – they know we are strong family oriented people and we have to take care of our elderly.
“They consider (dementia) as just getting old. If you’ve got cancer they straight away go look for help for cancer, but they don’t look for help for dementia.”
Dementia Australia last year released data showing the number of people in each federal electorate currently living with dementia and a projected figure for 2054.
Late last week the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) projected more than one million Australians will be living with the disease by 2065.
“The prevalence of dementia is projected to double within the next 30 years without significant intervention,” Dementia Australia chief executive Tanya Buchanan said.
“The projections make clear that this isn’t just an issue confined to a few electorates – the impact is nationwide,” she said.
“We recommend all federal MPs use this data to help them understand why dementia must be a policy priority nationally and for their electorates,” Prof Buchanan said.
“By taking a comprehensive approach to addressing dementia, we can reduce the impact of dementia into the future. We simply cannot afford to wait, and we call on the government to take decisive action.”
Electorates with the predicted biggest increase in cases include Perth in WA with a 112 per cent increase (3056 in 2025 v 6470 in 2065), Chisholm in Victoria (4181 v 8354), Lilley in Qld (2870 v 5886) and Solomon in the NT up 106 per cent from 982 to 2027.
The AIHW last week noted areas with larger, older populations will have a larger number of people predicted to be living with dementia.
Something leading Dementia researcher and clinician Professor Henry Brodaty said was not surprising.
“The epidemic or the wave of dementia is because of the ageing of the population,” Prof Brodaty told news.com.au
“The older the sector of the population the faster its growth.
“The proportion of the population 65 and over, is now 17 per cent … that’s one in six of the population now and will be approaching one in four of the population by the middle of the century.”
To help her help her mother Ms Sartawy sought to educate herself – and then her family and the wider community. Through her community work, she connected with University of Western Sydney dementia cognitive neuroscientist Diana Karamacoska, who held a series of educational workshops in southwest Sydney.
“The first workshop on dementia … was in Lakemba and I was the only person to turn up,” Ms Sartawy said.
“Now I’m very active with her doing workshops. When we used Friends United (website) we got to the Chinese, Vietnamese, Greeks and Arabic community, and reached over 300 people.
“The workshops were all recorded and sent overseas. They got sent to Algeria and Libya. Now I get feedback saying, ‘That’s the best thing you gave me’.”
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Participants were taught simple things such as making sure homes were clean, with no patterns on carpet or furniture that could disorient those with living with dementia.
“After that, taking care of my mum was the easiest thing because whatever agitated her I knew how to calm her down, I knew those triggers and how to put those fires out,” Ms Sartawy said.
And for Ms Sartawy, it also provided her with the invaluable advice on how to reconnect with her mother, who passed away in July 2024.
“Dr Diana told me to ‘find something that your mum resonates with you alone and she only remembers you for that’. In my family I’m known as the one who loves dancing
so I thought I’d try it,” she said.
“So I turned on the music, I opened the door and started dancing, and she looked up and she’s crying and she goes ‘Sanna, wanic, wan kentah?’ (Sanna, where are you, where were you?) and she recognised me.
“’Yerdah laykaa, mafi metleek, mafi metleek’ (Bless you, there’s no one like you, there’s no one like you) … All of these beautiful words came back and I was like, ‘Oh my God, I got my mum back’.”
After her mother’s death, Ms Sartawy has continued with her community work, something she says she is proud to be doing.
“I actually asked one of my sons, ‘What does it mean to you what I’m doing now with this advocacy’, and he said to me, ‘You’re just preparing me better and equipping my generation’.
“That made me feel good that they’re supported and know what to do,” Ms Sartawy said.
The co-chair of the federal Parliamentary Friends of Dementia group, senator Helen Polley, said despite gaining more funding over the past three years, “there is so much more work to be done”.
“Whatever we do about raising people’s awareness around brain health is going to be beneficial for their entire life – not just around dementia,” said Senator Polley, who lost her brother-in-law to dementia when he was aged just 50.
Originally published as Electorates with biggest numbers of those living with dementia
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