Over the last one and a half centuries, Estonia's population and ethnic structure has been majorly impacted by migration. Emigration as well as immigration took place in big waves. While there was emigration during the Second World War and in a period from 1989 to 1994, immigration waves took place after the Second World War and in the 1960s. By the turn of the millennium, emigration as well as immigration decreased. Half of the immigrants are returnees mostly from Finland and the Russian Federation. These countries as well as the UK are also the most frequent destination countries¹. Between 1990 and 2019, the migrant population (born abroad) halved (382,000 to 190,200) and the proportion of migrants in the total population fell from 24.4 to 14.4%².

There are 80,700 people with a migration background aged 65 or older. Of those, approx. 3,700 are estimated to exhibit some form of dementia. Calculations show the most affected migrant groups presumably originate from the Russian Federation (approx. 2,800), Ukraine (approx. 400), Belarus (approx. 300), Latvia (approx. 50), and Kazakhstan (approx. 50)³.

For Estonia it was not possible to identify a NDP, but a national care guideline for dementia was found. The ‘Estonian guideline for treatment and diagnosis of dementia’ from 2006 is 43 pages long and includes several topics such as prevention, dementia and driving, or stages and treatment of dementia. However, there is no reference to migration in any of these topics^4,5.