David Cameron has persuaded the Tories to double funding into dementia research – and insists the condition can be beaten.
The former PM, whose mum Mary has Alzheimer’s, hailed a £150million-a-year boost.
Addressing scientists, he said: “Last week I met the Health Secretary and can reveal exclusively that he said they were going to have a 10-year dementia strategy and double money going into research.
“We’re a country of 60 million people and soon we’re going to have one million people tipping into this world of darkness. And quite apart from the emotional pain, and I see that with my mother, who is in her late 80s, think of the cost.
“This is now costing more than stroke, more than heart disease, more than cancer. We’re only going to crack this through scientists.”
He was speaking at an event at the Silverstone Interactive Museum, held by F1 legend Sir Jackie Stewart’s charity Race Against Dementia, which flew scientists in for the event from around the world, including the US, Australia, Holland and Switzerland.
Sir Jackie, 83 – whose wife Helen has dementia – said: “It’s a very small area of speciality that is going to in the end get this done and break through. For sure it’ll happen.”
Mr Cameron made research a priority while in Downing Street and is president of Alzheimer’s Research UK.
Under his premiership he nearly quadrupled research funding from £27million in 2009-10 to £98 million in 2015-16.
However, it has since slipped back despite a previous Conservative manifesto pledge to double it by an extra £800million over the next decade in 2019 after Barbara Windsor wrote to Boris Johnson.
It reportedly fell from £88million in 2018-19 to £76million in 2019-20, despite being Britain’s biggest killer.
It is expected to kill one in three people born today, with another patient diagnosed every three seconds.
And some 50 million people worldwide have the degenerative neurological condition, a figure forecast to treble in the next 30 years to 152 million.
Britain spends £11.9billion a year on an estimated 850,000 patients - dwarfing the £5billion the NHS spends on cancer and £2.5billion on chronic heart disease.
Mr Cameron likened the fight to the battle against AIDS, which is now treatable.
And he is now preparing to embark on a fundraising tour of Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong, later this year.
He said: “It’s essential we raise the money because the way I see it it’s a bit like what governments and philanthropists had to do with AIDS in the beginning of the 1980s.
“People thought this was a death sentence, that there was never going to be a cure and that we would never sufficiently understand it.”
For more information, visit: www.raceagainstdementia.com
