Austria is held up as a model for disease-modifying treatment. A leading carer asks who can actually reach it – and what happens to those who cannot
Austria provisionally reimburses the new anti-amyloid Alzheimer’s therapies, disease-modifying antibodies such as lecanemab and donanemab – and runs treatment centres in every province. On paper, it is a model rollout.
But at the MindShift dialogue in Rome, carer and advocate Friederike de Maeyer asked a harder question: who can actually reach them? A diagnosis without a pathway to it, she warned, or without the support that should follow, helps no one.
De Maeyer chairs the Austrian National Association for Dementia Self-Help and cares at home for her husband, who has early-onset Lewy body dementia. She was speaking at MindShift, a closed-door policy dialogue held in Rome on 9-10 June.
The event drew clinicians, policymakers and patient representatives from 12 European countries to align national strategies and feed a common European policy direction on Alzheimer’s care.
