IT IS almost six years since hundreds of Alzheimer’s Society members, including myself and Bernie Nolan of the Nolan Sisters, (Mental Health Campaigner Joins Protest March, Chronicle, June 2005) marched through London to the House of Commons to lobby our local MPs -- mine being the Reading West MP Martin Salter, at the time.

We were trying to make the NHS drug watchdog NICE (the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) do a u-turn over its decision to block key medications from being available on the NHS to dementia sufferers - on the grounds that at £2.50 per person, per day, they were too expensive!

New draft evidence from NICE states that these medicines “should now be available, on the NHS, to all sufferers, whether suffering from mild, moderate or more severe forms/symptoms of dementia” (national press reports, October 7, 2010). An end of a national scandal?

A cost-effective policy chance?

A miracle (how often do national bodies admit mistakes and reject them)?

A victory (if a belated one) for campaigners?

Whatever! This particular u-turn is more than welcome and will help hundreds of thousands of dementia sufferers (and their carers et al). A real Christmas present, and one of the best, in living memory.

PAUL FARMER

Coley Park

Reading

H This letter wins the writer £10 of flowers from Just Flowers and a Reading FC goodie bag. Please allow 14 days for delivery.