The Conservatives will launch an onslaught against hard-to-cure
diseases if re-elected, the party has announced today.
More than £1.6 billion will be poured into research over the next
decade to find a cure for dementia under a Conservative majority
government.
The landmark announcement, the largest boost to dementia research
ever in the UK, will double current funding levels, setting
Britain’s finest scientists to work on a ‘Dementia Moonshot’.
In addition, a new £500 million fund will build on the success of
the Cancer Drugs Fund to give patients quicker access to the most
cutting-edge medicines for cancer and other diseases.
The scale of investment into a cure for dementia – an additional
£83 million a year – reflects both the scale of the challenge
that the disorder poses to the National Health Service, the cost
to the economy and the terrible impact it has on individuals and
families across the country. The money will be spent on
increasing the number of clinical research academics and
researchers in innovative techniques such as advanced
therapeutics and neurotechnologies.
Hailing the success of the Cancer Drugs Fund, which has given
patients faster access to the latest medicines and treatments
that currently struggle to be adopted by the NHS, the Prime
Minister has laid out how its successor the Innovative Medicines
Fund will be bigger and better. The new fund has increased
funding and its scope is extended to more diseases.
The UK already has a world-leading approach to access to
medicines and treatments, and through the existing NICE processes
we have already brought life-saving drugs like Orkambi (a cystic
fibrosis treatment) and Spinraza (a spinal muscular atrophy
treatment) to patients. But sometimes it can take too long for
the most innovative medicines to be adopted.
The number of people who suffer from dementia in the UK currently
stands at 850,000 and is set to rise to more than a million by
the middle of the next decade, before doubling in the next 30
years. Meanwhile, care costs are due to triple from £37.4 billion
to 94.1 billion by 2040.
Prime Minister said:
“Dementia can have a devastating impact on families and affects
millions across the UK. The impact on health and wellbeing, the
pain felt by loved ones and the stress and anxiety of enduring
this disease blights too many lives.
“It is one of the great medical challenges of our time and this
is our plan to tackle it: a record injection of cash that
unleashes the brilliant British science community that brought
the world penicillin, IVF and Proton Beam Therapy for cancer.
“It is a plan that gets right to the heart of the choice voters
face on the 12th December. Vote for the Conservatives and we can
get Brexit done, unlock our potential and focus on making
people’s lives better. Or vote for more Brexit delay and the
chaos of two referendums continuing to clog our political system
and stopping our great country from getting anything done.”
