UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced plans to double dementia research funding to £160m a year by 2024.
Johnson met recently with Dame Barbara Windsor’s husband, Scott Mitchell, earlier this week at Downing Street to discuss the difficulties in finding Alzheimer’s treatments and to discuss the suffering that this causes.
After the meeting, the Prime Minister launched the ‘Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission’, in honour of the Dame and the millions of other individuals affected by dementia.
Johnson said: “Dame Barbara Windsor was a British hero. I had the pleasure of meeting her both on the set of Eastenders as Peggy Mitchell, and at Downing Street as we discussed the injustices faced by dementia sufferers.
“I am delighted that we can now honour Dame Barbara in such a fitting way, launching a new national dementia mission in her name.”
The Prime Minister added an additional £95m to fund clinical trials and innovative research projects about dementia.
Scott Mitchell said: “Barbara would be so proud that she has had this legacy which will hopefully mean that families in the future won’t have to go through the same heart-breaking experience that she and I had to ensure. I can’t stop thinking about her looking down with pride.”
The new national mission’s recruitment process will start this week. Volunteers can register their interest through the Join Dementia Research website. These will work to tackle cost of trials while speeding up delivery.
Steve Barclay, Health and Social Care Secretary, said: “This new dementia mission, backed by £95 million of government funding, will help us find new ways to deliver earlier diagnosis, enhanced treatments and ensure a better quality of life for those living with thus disease, both now and in the future.”
Dame Barbara, who died in 2020, was best known for her roles as Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders and in the Carry On films.
She campaigned to raise awareness of the disease, with her husband revealing publicly in 2018 that she had been diagnosed four years earlier.
