Improving the treatment of people with dementia. An action research project in North Kivu Province, Democratic Republic of Congo.

The estimated number of Africans suffering from some form of dementia in 2015 was 2.13 million and this is projected to rise to 7.62 million by 2050. Many sufferers engage in irrational behaviour which, across many African countries, is interpreted as resulting from witchcraft. As a result, the families of dementia sufferers are ostracised and dementia sufferers themselves are subject to violence. This article reports an action research project carried out in four rural communities near Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 2022 and 2023. In the exploration phase, data was collected from the families of dementia sufferers and from other community members concerning their experiences, attitudes and behaviour towards dementia sufferers and their families. This provided the basis for an intervention in the form of a community education programme which presented objective information about the disease. An evaluation of the outcomes of the intervention in two of the communities was carried out nine months later and found that there had been a dramatic positive change in attitudes and behaviour towards dementia sufferers, both by their families and by community members in general.