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Today the Alzheimer's Research Trust has released 'Dementia 2010' which looks at the economic burden of dementia and compares research funding for dementia with spending on cancer and heart research. Unsurprisingly the report (which was compiled by the Health Economics Research Centre) finds that dementia costs much more than the other conditions yet receives a fraction of the funding. This disparity is explicable in a number of different ways, significant progress has been made in treating cancer and heart conditions over the past decade and these successes are more likely to attract research funding than dementia where very little progress has been made, dementia is also a complex condition that we don't fully understand- research therefore has to start at a fairly basic level so that any funding now is unlikely to provide immediate or short-term results, the other factor is ageism, dementia is seen as a condition of old age and therefore attracts less interest than those conditions which can strike at any age.
The BBC story quotes the report as saying that each person with dementia costs the economy ?27,647 a year which is nearly five time more than those with cancer and eight times more than those with a heart condition. The BBC does not say how the researchers arrived at this figure but the report reveals that over half this amount is attributable to 'unpaid carers' which relates to caring tasks carried out by spouses and other relatives when the person with dementia is living in the community. This figure (?12.4bn) is at best an educated guess, nobody has calculated the extent and cost of informal care- it does however make for a good sound bite. I'm not disputing that the current cost of dementia is much higher than any other condition (people with dementia need more vigilant care than cancer patients or people with heart problems) but I don't think charities do themselves any favours by promoting figures that are estimates at best.
The problem that the Trust is trying to highlight is best shown by the figures for research funding in the UK. ?590 million is spent on cancer research, ?169 million is spent on heart disease whereas dementia research receives ?50 million. The government provided ?36 million for dementia research compared with ?266 million for cancer and ?84 million for heart disease. When the government have been asked to justify this anomaly, ministers have complained about the poor quality of dementia research- which is something the current Care Minister, Phil Hope, hinted at when interviewed today.
The real issue shouldn't be some sort of competition between various conditions but those funding research need to look at the implications of failing to find more effective treatments for dementia in the next ten years. With almost 1 million people affected by 2021 and a residential care placement costing ?30,000 at today's prices, government ministers may need to consider what they can do to promote quality research (preferably on an international basis) in dementia rather than carping at the current situation.
The other issue which needs to be addressed is the poor quality of care for people with dementia in most care homes, to improve this will cost significantly more than all the monies spent on health research but it does need to be done. Care home staff need to be provided with formal training in all aspects of dementia care and encouraged to ensure that a reasonable quality of life is maintained.
Of course, none of this is likely to happen. The public finances are in such a poor shape that any government is going to really struggle to maintain the status quo and will be extremely reluctant to provide new monies regardless of how worthy the cause may be.
