Sixty-five Leeton shire residents attended a free dementia support and education day this week to hear some of those figures and what they mean going forward.

The event was hosted by Alzheimer’s Australia project officer Paddy Parnell and aimed at educating communities and families that support people living with dementia.

A mobile bus equipped with information and resources was part of the day and has been on the road in the Riverina for more than two weeks providing insight into the disease.

Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe the symptoms of a large group of illnesses that cause the progressive decline of a person's cognitive abilities.

The day was also hosted by Centacare.

“The key message we are trying to deliver is based on years of research,” Ms Parnell said.

“We have now found significant health and lifestyle factors that have an influence over how we can reduce our risk of dementia.”

Dementia is not preventable and there is no cure.

“It is a slow, progressive and fatal disease of the brain,” Ms Parnell said.

“One can live from two to 20 years with the disease, it depends how early they are diagnosed.”

However, Ms Parnell said there were ways to reduce the risk.

According to Ms Parnell over 348,000 people in Australia have dementia.

One third of this number is in NSW.

There are also more than 1.2 million people, including young residents, caring for someone with dementia in Australia.

“This has a separate care group,” said Ms Parnell.

“They may have a career, a young family, they need to drive places. They have more responsibility than the elderly so they need more care.

“We are appealing to the government because it’s (dementia) going to be a drain on the national health system.

“Currently we have 1800 new cases diagnosed a week. The prediction is in 2030 this will double and in 2050 this will double again.”