This is the BBC World Service, I'm Andrew Bonford and this is the second episode of our series

Solving Alzheimer's, exploring how the most challenging disease in the world requires

action by governments, scientists, and most of all, ordinary people.

This week, paying for dementia, the trillion dollar disease.

When South Korean President Moon Jae-in launched his election campaign in 2017, he made

a real gamble, rather than kick it off with a popular policy like Lower Taxes, he went

for something off the wall, the fight against dementia, governments everywhere struggle

with this one, it's certainly not an obvious vote winner.

I killed your mother, that's not a line from a movie, it's from someone who killed

his wife who had dementia after years of caring for her.

When I first heard this, it was really painful to me.

My own mother-in-law has advanced dementia.

President Moon heads the most rapidly aging country in the world.

South Korea is a demographic time bomb, but it's like an exaggerated version of many

other aging countries.

Moon Jae-in promised revolutionary policies and asked a very fundamental question, what's

the point of government if it can't help people, is the pain of dementia.

Dementia is not a disease that an individual can deal with on their own.

The whole country needs to take responsibility.

Lots of countries have their head in the sand on Alzheimer's, the most common form of dementia,

because the costs are so eye-watering, globally it's a trillion dollar disease, a trillion

that's a one with twelve zeros, a thousand billion dollars, and in ten years it will double.

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