{"id":602148,"date":"2026-09-16T12:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/602148\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T12:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T12:54:08","slug":"dementia-drugs-made-in-uk-but-denied-on-nhs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/602148\/","title":{"rendered":"Dementia drugs made in UK but denied on NHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

But there is a danger in allowing dementia policy to become only a conversation about care.<\/p>\n

A country that is serious about dementia must build what makes new medicines affordable: early detection, cheap diagnostics, trial-ready patients and affordable treatments.<\/p>\n

The science is moving rapidly. The latest research pipeline contains 158 treatments across 192 clinical trials, with the majority targeting the underlying disease rather than simply treating its symptoms.<\/p>\n

Blood tests that can detect Alzheimer\u2019s from a routine sample are recruiting from NHS memory clinics through the ADAPT and READ-OUT studies. Lecanemab and donanemab have shown that the progression of early Alzheimer\u2019s can be slowed.<\/p>\n

We were the first country in Europe to license these drugs, but Nice subsequently concluded that neither represented sufficient value for money for the NHS in England and Wales. I regret that decision enormously, the depressing signal it gave dementia researchers, and I hope it will be reviewed.<\/p>\n

It seems extraordinary that Britain is investing in its capacity to supply lecanemab around the world, using British scientific and pharmaceutical expertise, yet British patients are being denied access to it through the NHS on contested evidence about cost and benefit.<\/p>\n

We are a country that is developing and manufacturing medicines to tackle one of our great health challenges<\/a> but have concluded that our own population should not have access to them on the NHS.<\/p>\n

The NHS must make difficult choices about finite resources, but those choices have to be based on assumptions that properly reflect the human cost of disease.<\/p>\n

Dementia is devastating for carers<\/p>\n

At the heart of this decision is Nice\u2019s assessment of how much quality of life is lost as Alzheimer\u2019s progresses. Its modelling places remarkably little value on the difference between mild cognitive impairment and severe dementia.<\/p>\n

Most strikingly, the methodology has estimated only around a 4 per cent reduction in quality of life between these stages. That is difficult to reconcile with the lived experience of dementia.<\/p>\n

Severe dementia is not a slightly worse version of mild cognitive impairment. It can mean losing the ability to communicate, recognise family members, eat and drink independently, dress and wash, or look after oneself.<\/p>\n

The burden also falls on those who care for them. Families may have to give up work, reduce their hours, spend their savings or provide round-the-clock supervision. They experience exhaustion, isolation and profound loss while the person they love is still alive.<\/p>\n

To suggest that the difference in quality of life between mild and severe dementia amounts to only 4 per cent is therefore not merely a technical disagreement. It raises a fundamental question about whether the methodology is capturing what dementia actually does to patients and families.<\/p>\n

If a model produces a result so far removed from the reality experienced by patients, families and professional carers, we should question whether it is fit for purpose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"But there is a danger in allowing dementia policy to become only a conversation about care. A country…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[3135,799,134,8284,524,111,43,139,229961,69,1177,25212],"class_list":["post-602148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-medication","tag-alzheimers-disease","tag-dementia","tag-health","tag-health-news","tag-medication","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nhs-national-health-service","tag-nz","tag-standard","tag-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}