Cameron urges NHS access to cheaper Alzheimer's drugs and 18-week diagnosis cap

Lord Cameron has appealed to Andy Burnham to give NHS patients access to drugs for Alzheimer's disease and to set a maximum wait of 18 weeks for a diagnosis. The former Conservative prime minister told the Telegraph that now is the “perfect time” for government action, with a number of promising treatments on the horizon, according to the Mirror and The Independent.

Cameron, who is president of the charity Alzheimer's Research UK, lost his mother, Mary, to the disease in 2025. The Department of Health and Social Care said decisions on routine NHS use are made independently by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which is currently evaluating two treatments.

What Cameron is asking for

Cameron has led calls for drugs previously rejected for NHS use to be approved for Alzheimer's. The Mirror and The Independent reported that treatments such as lecanemab and donanemab have advanced the field, but that other medicines are far cheaper and experts already know the risk of side effects for some of them. The drugs were licensed in 2024 but are not available on the NHS outside clinical trials.

Together with dozens of dementia specialists, he is also calling for a maximum 18-week wait for a diagnosis.

Why he is speaking out now

In the interview, Cameron described his mother's final years as a time of darkness in which she knew she was losing her mind. He said she repeatedly begged her daughter, Cameron's sister, to end her life, and that his sister refused, saying she did not want to go to prison for murdering her mother.

Burnham's own father, Roy, died with Alzheimer's in September, the reports said. Last month the prime minister backed a trial, called Ad-Smart, that experts say could more than halve the time it takes to test Alzheimer's treatments. Burnham said he was proud to support it in the hope of quicker results than traditional methods.

The social care debate

Cameron also expressed regret that his government did not introduce a cap on care costs. He suggested an insurance-based system, with the government backing the insurance as it does for terrorism damage, could protect families from very large bills. He said that of a row of 10 houses, one will face catastrophic long-term care costs and the other nine will not, and that he does not have the exact answer.

What the government says

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson called Cameron's account deeply moving and said there is more to do. The department pointed to several measures:

£33 million through the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme to recruit more people into clinical studies of new dementia treatments.
The first Modern Service Framework for Frailty and Dementia, which is being developed.
The appointment of a national dementia tsar.
A brought-forward timetable for Baroness Casey's commission on reform of social care, with dementia support a central priority for the new National Care Service.

What this means for patients and families

Alzheimer's is the most common type of dementia and affects around 600,000 people in the UK, according to the reports. For those patients, the drugs Cameron wants approved remain out of reach on the NHS unless they join a clinical trial. Whether that changes depends on Nice, which makes the decision independently on the basis of costs and benefits. No date for a decision was given.

Around Prague, based on reporting by Mirror, The Independent

Cover photo: Number 10 from London / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0, cropped

Share: Telegram WhatsApp