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Dementia

I am grateful for the opportunity to have an Adjournment debate on this topic. This debate is timely in a number of ways, given the decision by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence that was announced a couple of weeks ago and the fact that this week is national carers week. Many of those on the front line of dealing with dementia are not the individual sufferers, but those affected by the ripples that it sends out through the family and those who take on the role of informal carers, the consequences of which can be huge in terms of stress and its health consequences. I want to cover two or three issues in this short debate, not least the decisions by NICE, and try to tease out where the Government think we should go from here. It is about 100 years since Alois Alzheimer first described the disease that today bears his name, at a medical conference in Germany. One hundred years on, there is still no cure and our understanding of the basic biological processes behind dementia remains limited. Dementia affects about one person in 20 over 65 and one person in five over 80. There are estimated to be about 750,000 people in the UK with dementia, and that figure is set to rise to more than 1.8 million people by 2050. There is debate to be had about the veracity of those figures, and there is perhaps more to be done to ensure that we are clear on what the epidemiological data tell us and what the trends really are. However, those figures are generally accepted and they demonstrate that there is a significant and growing financial burden as a result of dementia. That burden is three times more than that of any other of the major diseases—cancer, stroke and heart disease—put together. That is why dementia is one of the greatest health and social care challenges of the 21st century. It is rated by the public as second only to cancer as the disease of which they are most afraid. There is a taboo about dementia and a fear about losing one’s independence and becoming debilitated, at the root of which is perhaps the fact that there is no cure. Recent events have done little to change that perception and have perhaps even fuelled that fear further. NICE’s recent decision to restrict or even ban certain Alzheimer’s drugs has come as a blow to patients, carers and clinicians alike. Before exploring that decision, however, I should like to pose some questions about research. The basic science behind dementia is still in its infancy. Investment in essential research has not been made and many in the field of medical research believe that research on Alzheimer’s and dementia is about 20 years behind where it could have been if it had received adequate funding. Research on treatment and cures for Alzheimer’s receives far less funding than such research for other diseases. As of 2001, research on Alzheimer’s received just £3.7 million of Government research funding, as compared with £33 million for cancer research, and the most recent figures suggest a widening of the gap in research spend. For every £11 spent per Alzheimer’s patient on UK research annually, £289 is spent per cancer patient. I want to make it clear, however, that I am not questioning the investment that has been made in cancer research; I merely point to the unevenness of the research effort.