DIAGNOSIS: DEMENTIA – focussed government plan fades into broader health strategy

Last year the government announced it was going to implement a 10-year plan to tackle dementia.

It seems to have forgotten.

­The promise of a bespoke dementia strategy was made at the Alzheimer’s Society’s annual conference last May by Health Secretary Sajid Javid. Since then, the government has moved on but the policy hasn’t. Successive Health Secretaries Thérèse Coffey and incumbent Steve Barclay both failed to implement it. Due at the end of last year, it still has not materialised.

The Alzheimer’s Society pressed the government on the 10-year plan and posed over twenty-six questions asking for progress updates and were told each time they would hear more in “due course”. Dissatisfied, they presented the government with an open letter signed by 36,000 people demanding action. Dementia was subsequently included in the Major Conditions Strategy which also includes cancers, cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory disease, mental ill health and musculoskeletal disorders.  

During the pandemic the diagnosis rate fell and still hasn’t reached pre-pandemic levels. The Major Conditions Strategy acknowledges: not enough people have access to an accurate and timely dementia diagnosis- with significant variation across the country. Covid also curtailed many research projects into dementia as labs were closed and staff redeployed elsewhere in the NHS.

The Strategy Framework states: DHSC is investing £100 million in a set of NIHR policy research units, including for cancer, dementia and neurodegeneration and mental health, and the Office for Life Sciences is investing over £200 million to deliver 5 of its key, UK-wide healthcare missions, 3 of which are major conditions (cancer, dementia and mental health).

Can an all-encompassing strategy across multiple departments be more effective than a targeted one at meeting the needs of a growing number of dementia patients? Alzheimer’s Research UK said “rapid action” is needed and a “clear government strategy…to harness research breakthroughs” and that it is “ready to hold the government to account until this new strategy delivers just that.”

Picture: Belinda Evans

© Shirley Pearce, Understanding Dementia

Almost a million people in the UK are living with dementia and it has been the UK’s leading cause of death since 2015. Historically though, dementia research has attracted only a third as much funding as cancer research. The Clinical Trials Register shows that between 2004 and 2020 in the UK there were thirteen times more clinical trials for cancer than dementia. The government says it is increasing funding for dementia research to £160m a year by next year.

In my podcast I talk to Shirley Pearce, a retired occupational therapist and dementia specialist who set up the charity Understanding Dementia and developed a unique programme to help people with dementia and those caring for them.  UNDERSTANDING DEMENTIA PODCAST . If you have enjoyed reading this article please share it on social media so others can too. 

Picture: Belinda Evans

© Shirley Pearce, Understanding Dementia

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