Dementia, the most common cause of which is Alzheimer’s disease (AD), is a global health challenge, greatly impacting people living with dementia, families, health systems, and economies. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is disproportionately affected. SSA community dementia prevalence is similar to that reported in high-income countries (HICs) but appears to be rising faster, due to population aging and lifestyle factors.

Up to 40% of dementias are potentially preventable, but prevention research requires early-stage detection. Appropriate early AD measures are not currently available in SSA, limiting participation in global dementia prevention trials. Similarly, there is limited knowledge of the feasibility of measurement of modifiable dementia risk factors at a community level.

Vijiji Tanzania advances understanding of how best to measure early AD changes, and potentially modifiable dementia risk factors in older people in Tanzania in a manner both culturally valid and directly comparable to HIC data, enabling future collaboration. Vijiji Tanzania is working with the Newcastel University in developing and adapting measures of the cognitive functions with neuropathological and neuropsychological evidence for impairment in early AD, particularly in the two years prior to dementia onset. These include semantic memory, language, spatial navigation, and visuoconstruction. Vijiji Tanzania work with communities, stakeholders, and people with dementia in Tanzania to review specialist measures and consider if and how these could be culturally adapted, whilst still measuring the required constructs. Adapted measures are teaken robustly psychometrically evaluated including diagnostic accuracy data (for AD, ICD-11 dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI)) in clinical and community settings, and demographically stratified normative values.

Vijiji Tanzania assessing the feasibility of the evaluated early AD measures, and also measurements of potentially modifiable dementia risk factors for use in future longitudinal studies through the establishment of community feasibility cohorts in two areas of Tanzania (rural Kilimanjaro and urban Mbeya) and conducting pilot follow-up.

To ensure scale-up and build capacity, Vijiji Tanzania is working with the African Dementia Consortium (AfDC) intend to obtain demographically stratified normative values for the selected and newly developed and evaluated Tanzanian measures.