The campaign must go on (From The Northern Echo)

The campaign must go on

10:43am Tuesday 26th June 2007 in Don't Stop Dementia Drugs

LAST Friday, thousands of people in 30 towns and cities across the North-East and the wider country marched in the hope they could persuade the Government to disregard controversial advice from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) to restrict access to dementia drugs.

The drugs cost as little as £2.50 per day. The turn-out on the marches must have given the protestors some hope.

This morning, Nice announces its new guidelines which come into effect from today. Nice has moved a little, but not a lot - and certainly not enough.

Yesterday, if your GP diagnosed you as being in the early stages of Alzheimer's, you could be prescribed one of three drugs which would give you the chance of a few more precious months in the same world as your loved ones.

Tomorrow, the same diagnosis and your GP will tell you that you can't have the drugs until the disease has developed so far that you have left your family far behind.

We believe this is unfair and inhuman.

Nice maintains that its guidance is based on evidence but this is strongly contested by patients, carers, doctors and nurses.

The Alzheimer's Society - which represents patients and their families - disagrees, as do 600 psychiatrists - the total membership of the Faculty of Old Age Psychiatry which deals with the patients.

So far, 3,520 readers of The Northern Echo have signed our petition calling for the guidance to be re-thought. This represents an extraordinary response.

We urge more people to do so. The form is on page 13 of today's paper.

Because the campaign does not end here. Nice's decision should be overturned, and it can be overturned by Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health.

But she - being a politician - will only do it if she is convinced that there is a great groundswell of public opinion demanding her action.

We must convince her that there is.