Dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, accounted for 19,019 of Australia’s 188,421 registered deaths in 2025, reaching 10.1% for the first time, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) said.
That placed dementia at the top of the ABS cause-of-death list, ahead of ischaemic heart diseases, which accounted for 16,228 deaths. The agency recorded 18,291 dementia deaths in 2024. Its annual figures follow the year deaths were registered, not necessarily the year people died, and the 2025 data are preliminary.
The Guardian reported that asthma deaths reached a decade high in 2025.
Dementia deaths rose 37.3% from 2016 to 2025. The ABS said the age-standardised dementia death rate was more stable over that period as Australia’s population aged. Across all causes, the age-standardised death rate was 495.5 per 100,000 people in 2025, down from 507.8 a year earlier.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) estimated 18,300 dementia deaths in 2024, or 9.8% of deaths. Its total differs slightly from the ABS count because the AIHW uses a broader definition that includes additional categories, such as Lewy body dementia.
For its 2025 figures, the ABS added frontotemporal and Lewy body dementia codes to its dementia category. The agency said the coding change had little statistical effect on earlier cause-of-death rankings.
Dementia Australia Chief Executive Prof. Tanya Buchanan told The Guardian the figures added urgency to calls for support for people with dementia and their caregivers. Asthma Australia CEO Kate Miranda told the newspaper that inadequate asthma control can contribute to deaths that could be prevented.
The ABS plans to publish a paper in the first half of 2027 examining mortality trends and changes in measurement, including how those changes affect assessments of the pandemic’s impact.
