Dementia Action Week

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this incredibly important debate. This year has been a year of great loss. We have witnessed the loss of loved ones, the loss of livelihoods and the loss of our usual freedoms and day-to-day routines. However, we have also seen an immense effort, on the part of our scientists and researchers, to produce a vaccine that is now allowing us to think about returning to life that resembles normality. I think there is a great lesson to be learnt and it is one that, for the most part, we all know to be true: when we focus our attention and come together with a common purpose, we can achieve great things. So as we continue along the road to reopening, we can begin to look at tackling other illnesses, including dementia, which is rapidly becoming one of the most heartrendingly cruel diseases of our times.

Dementia is now not only the leading cause of death in this country, but the only disease in the top 10 leading causes of death for which there is currently no treatment for either prevention or cure. Like many of my colleagues speaking this afternoon, I, too, have experienced this disease at first hand. Both of my grandmothers suffered from dementia and, as time went on, both went from being animated, proud, fun women who were very active in the lives of their families and wider communities to shadows of their former selves; dementia affects not only people’s memory—as people here will know—but their ability to do even the most basic things. Eventually, both were left unable to speak. I vividly remember, as a little boy, lying in my bed praying that God would return my gran to the gran I knew when I was much younger and that she would, once again, be able to recognise me. Of course, it is not like that. Dementia affects not only those who are suffering, but the entire family. For example, for my maternal grandfather, his entire life became about caring for her.

My family’s experience is not unusual. Rather, it is a story replicated hundreds of thousands of times across this country and others. While great progress has been made over the last 10 years in terms of improved diagnosis rates and increased public awareness, it is estimated that over one third of people affected by the condition still do not receive a formal diagnosis. In the case of my health board, NHS Grampian, 4,292 people were diagnosed with dementia in 2019. However, according to Alzheimer’s Research UK, that figure is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg.

I support the Government’s dementia strategy wholeheartedly and I welcome the steps being taken by the Scottish Government north of border. I want to see the UK as a whole become a world leader in treatment, care and research. But we must keep such intentions in sight and deliver on the commitments we have made. We must take advantage of the improvements in imaging, artificial intelligence and genetics and look to transform early detection so that treatment has at least a chance of being effective.

For all its sadness and turmoil, this year has proved that it is within our power, with the help of research and science, to deliver life-changing results. Let us therefore take heart from the vaccine success and seek to replicate that in meeting the challenge posed by the devastating and ever more prevalent disease that is dementia, so that little boys around the country will not be in the position that I was in, and that so many others are, of praying that their grandmother will be able to return to the person they once were.