PM Andy Burnham announces £48 million to “defeat” dementia

Alzheimer Scotland welcomes the commitment from Prime Minister Andy Burnham to make dementia research a priority, as he announced a £48 million industry partnership to speed up the search for a cure.
Mr Burnham, whose father Roy died last month with Alzheimer’s disease, said he had “real hope that Britain can come together to defeat dementia” and that he wanted it “to be the country that makes the breakthrough”.

Under the plans, the Government will invest £33 million through the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme, alongside funding from Bristol Myers Squibb, GSK and Gates Ventures, to tackle one of the biggest barriers to dementia research: recruiting enough people into clinical studies to test promising new treatments.

The investment will support the work of The BARBARA Alliance, a UK-wide not-for-profit partnership bringing together government, industry, academia, charities and people with lived experience of dementia.

Our Chief Executive Henry Simmons said:

“We welcome this announcement and the investment it represents in improving dementia diagnosis, treatment and access to research.

“We would, however, want to see Scotland receive a fair share of this investment so that people here can benefit equally from progress in dementia care and new treatments.

“We also believe this is the right time to develop a new approach to assessing dementia treatments in real-world clinical practice.

“We already have two new dementia drugs approved, but these are not available on the NHS due to strict cost-benefit criteria. We believe the process used to assess dementia drugs needs to be urgently reviewed.

“We would like to see this funding used to develop a new assessment method – one that combines early assessment and prevention, with pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions. This would generate the real-world evidence needed to understand the true holistic benefits of new treatments and support better, faster decisions about access to them.

“Scotland has the expertise and infrastructure to help lead this work and we are willing to play our part in this. Having fair access to this funding could be a game changer for our work here in Scotland, with potential to bring enormous benefits to the whole of the UK.”