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To all who wrote to me about the paper "Living with Parkinson's Disease - Challenges and Positive Steps for the Future" - Thank you for your kind words. The paper was published on 18 June 2007, and is only just now coming to the attention of the academic world - time moves slowly there! The paper had some 17 contributors in all, from several disciplines. It was published by Access Economics, an organisation used in Australia as a "think tank" by both sides of politics. It is some 143 pages in all, and covers such topics as Prevalence and Mortality of PD, Estimating the Economic Costs of PD - which includes Health System Costs, Productivity Costs and Informal Care Costs. Here is a direct quote from the report.... The total financial cost of PD per annum was around $527.8 million in 2005. "These are the real economic costs. In addition there were around $30.4 million of "transfer payments" - loss of tax revenue and welfare payments. These payments change the distribution of who bears the costs, and are also associated with smaller real efficiency losses from reallocation of resources, called "deadweight losses". The main cost components of PD were health system costs ($343.9 million), followed by deadweight losses ($82.8 million), productivity and carer costs ($60.6 million) and other financial costs ($40.5 million) such as aids and modifications to maintain independence, childcare and housekeeping costs and transport, amongst other things. However the financial costs of PD are incurred over many years. While the median years living with PD is 12.2 years many live with the condition for well over 20 years. The lifetime financial cost of a PWP living with PD for 12 years (around $100,000) is on par with the average lifetime financial cost of cancer ($114,500). While lower than many childhood cancers, it is significantly higher than prostate and breast cancer (both around $64,000) (Access Economics, 2007). In addition to financial costs, the burden of disease - the suffering and premature death experienced by people with PD - is estimated to cost an additional 39,100 DALYs (years of healthy life lost), with 76% due to disability and the remaining 23% due to premature death. The net value of the burden of disease was $6.3 billion in 2005." ............. You can multiply these figures by a factor of 15, to allow for the difference in population numbers between the USA and Australia! The paper can be downloaded from:- http://www.parkinsonsnsw.org.au/assets/attachments/misc/AccessEconomics_repo rt1.pdf Dr. James Slattery, PhD Soc Sc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn