Dementia cash to hit £66m

Funding for research into dementia is to be more than doubled by 2015 in a bid to make Britain a world leader in the field, David Cameron will announce today.

The Prime Minister will declare that tackling the “national crisis” posed by the disease is one of his personal priorities.

He will say it is a “scandal” that the UK has not done more to address dementia, which is thought to affect 670,000 people, although about 400,000 have not been diagnosed.

The cost to UK society is estimated at £23 billion. Over the next ten years, the number with the disease is expected to rise to one million.

Overall funding for dementia research is to reach £66 million by 2015, from £26.6m in 2010.