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The Conservatives have pledged to put an extra £83m a year into dementia research over the next decade if they form the next government.
The investment, which would double current funding, was described by the party as the “largest boost to dementia research ever” in the UK.
Around 850,000 people in the UK currently have dementia.
The Alzheimer’s Society said it welcomed any “serious plan” to invest in research.
The number of people with dementia is set to rise to more than a million by the middle of the next decade, and is predicted to double in the next 30 years.
The extra money promised by the Tories would be spent on increasing the number of clinical research academics and researchers studying the disease.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock told the Daily Express how “heartbreaking” it was to watch his grandmother battle the disease for the last five years of her life – but added he was “hopeful” a cure could be found.
“I know from deep personal experience just how wonderful it would be if we could delay the onset of dementia because it would help so many families – and if we found a cure altogether it would be a huge stride forward for humanity,” he told the paper.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said dementia was the “next great frontier” in medicine and that the UK should be “leading” in the fight to tackle it.
The Alzheimer’s Society estimates the total cost of care for people with the condition in the UK is £34.7bn. That is set to rise to £94.1bn by 2040.
Fiona Carragher, the society’s chief policy and research officer, said: “We welcome any party that comes forward at the election with a serious plan to invest in dementia research.
“This positive funding announcement would approximately double what is spent now and could make a huge difference.”
But she added: “Every year dementia costs the economy £34bn. We have called for 1% of this to address the problem long term, so this announcement does fall short of that, but is still a big step in the right direction.
“Dementia research lags behind other disease areas and we urgently need research to fund new drugs but we also need to fund research into care – accompanying this with radical reform of the broken social care system.”
The Conservatives also pledged to create a new £500m fund for new medicines for cancer and other diseases was also promised.
The Innovative Medicines Fund would follow-on from the work of the Cancer Drugs Fund, with the aim of providing access to new medicines for patients with conditions such as Huntington’s disease.
