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The number of Alzheimer’s cases in the United States is rising, especially among Latinos — the fastest growing minority in the country.
With no cure in sight, diagnoses among U.S. Latinos are expected to increase more than eightfold by 2060, to 3.5 million, according to a report by the University of Southern California’s Edward R. Roybal Institute on Aging and the Latinos Against Alzheimer’s network.
This wave of Alzheimer’s will likely impose a large financial and emotional burden on many Latino families.
Tania Yanes, 51, belongs to one of those families. Until recently, she was the main caregiver for her mother, Blanca Rosa Rivera, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2004.
Rivera, now 76, is “100-percent dependent” on her children to eat, bathe, and move around the house, Yanes said.
In a report which aired on KPCC radio in Los Angeles, California Healthline’s multimedia reporter and producer, Heidi de Marco, revealed the daily challenges faced by Yanes and Rivera, who illustrate the strain of the memory-robbing disease on families and health care resources.
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