IN AN extraordinary case of bad timing, while health professionals were celebrating the Government’s announcement that the country was to have a strategy for tackling dementia, the treatments were labelled off limits.

In the High Court, a decision by the drugs spending watchdog to restrict the use of Alzheimer’s medications to those with mild to moderate disease was upheld.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) ruled last year that Aricept, Exelon and Reminyl were cost-effective only in patients with severe Alzheimer’s. Dr Sarah Jarvis, a GP in West London, tells GP (August 17) that the timing of the High Court decision was “spectacularly bad”, coming just days after the Department of Health announced its national dementia strategy.

One of the strategy’s aims is to diagnose dementia earlier and improve treatment. “GPs will be diagnosing more … early-stage Alzheimer’s under the strategy,” says Dr Jarvis. “Early diagnosis will not, however, change the management of the disease without access to the drugs.”

Nurses were equally unimpressed. “We feel powerless. Yes, we can diagnose people earlier, but what have we got to offer? It is very cruel,” Rhonda Knight, a nurse and senior lecturer at the University of the West of England, tells Nursing Standard (Aug 15).

Nick Bosanquet, Professor of Health Policy at Imperial College London, tells Health Service Journal (Aug 16) that Nice is not equipped to be an efficient rationing body. “If the NHS is riddled with inefficiency and waste it’s ludicrous for Nice to be rationing a few drugs on the fringe.”

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