Government announces strategy to help dementia sufferers

Thursday, 05 February 2009

The Government published its first national dementia strategy yesterday, which must be seen as good news in a society which too often neglects the elderly of the country.

The Government has a five-year strategy, using £150m, which includes “memory clinics” in every town, a better chance of early diagnosis, better treatment of dementia, more support for carers, and a senior doctor to oversee dementia care in very hospital.

Further, GPs will receive training in the identification of the early signs of dementia which will enable the early treatment of the disease, allowing sufferers to live their lives as normally as possible.

The benefits of the strategy will be wider than that: many people with apparent memory problems actually turn out to not have dementia at all, but to be suffering from the side-effects of drug treatment or other ilnesses, such as depression, in which some symptoms are the same as dementia, but are much easier to treat.

Medical organisations who represent the elderly, such as the Alzheimer’s Society, welcomed the strategy. The Society’s voice has been ignored for so long, but its backing for the strategy is seen as important to its success.

It seems that Government ministers have finally faced the fact that the country could be facing a dementia crisis which threatens to overwhelm the NHS and social care if nothing were to be done.

The condition affects nearly three-quarters of a million people ion the UK, and it is estimated that one in three people over 65 will die with dementia, with numbers expected to double in the next three decades as the average age of the population of the country increases.

Some experts estimate that within the next 30 years dementia could be costing the economy £50bn per year. Given the current economic crisis and the bill it is going to cause future generations, the Government obviously felt it had no further choice but to act on dementia.

The strategy is incomplete, however. Firstly, there is no extra money earmarked for research into the condition that currently has no cure. Its funding labours well behind that for cancer, heart disease and strokes. Secondly, there is no policy to deal with the anti-psychotic drugs used to deal with “difficult” sufferers. Ministers pledged in May to look into this, but it has been postponed.

Nevertheless, this Government strategy must be seen as good step forward in the battles against dementia.

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