Govt to announce £15m dementia fund in Autumn Statement

The government will announce a £15 million fund to help find cures for dementia in tomorrow's (December 3rd) Autumn Statement. 

David Cameron has said the UK must play a pivotal role in tackling the disease and the chancellor will unveil further details in his forthcoming speech, the Telegraph reports.

This sum of money will bring together investors from the private, public and philanthropic sectors and a number of different research projects will be supported. This forms part of the government's wider plans to spend £66 million on dementia research by 2015.

The prime minister said: "Tomorrow we will announce new funding to help drive forward the search for new drugs to beat dementia. Dementia is one of the greatest enemies of humanity and we must all play our part defeating it."

Such a sum of money will be welcomed by the scientific community, especially in light of the fact that 99.6 per cent of research trials between 2002 and 2012 proved unsuccessful. 

Mr Cameron has previously called dementia the "greatest enemy" that humanity was facing and pledged to financially back the efforts going on to find a cure or treatments. 

Earlier this year, he spoke about his fears of developing the disease and praised the fact a national debate was taking place instead of everyone ignoring what is going on.

Dr Dennis Gillings was appointed as a dementia adviser by the prime minister earlier this year and pointed out how research is "achingly slow". He called for the world to come together in a similar way that it did for HIV/Aids and is campaigning for regulation to be freed up so new drugs can be trialled. 

It's believed that in excess of 115 million people will have the degenerative condition by 2050. 

Read more about Barchester's dementia care homes