David Cameron says Alzheimer's made his mother beg sister to kill her in NHS drugs plea

Résumé détaillé

David Cameron said it was the "perfect time" for the Government to act on Alzheimer's as he called for NHS access to drugs for the disease and a maximum 18-week wait for diagnosis

David Cameron has revealed how his mum repeatedly begged her daughter to end her life as her Alzheimer worsened, in an appeal to Andy Burnham to give NHS patients access to drugs for the disease.

The former Conservative prime minister said it was the “perfect time” for Government action with a number of promising treatments on the horizon.

In an interview with the Telegraph newspaper, he reflected on his mother Mary Cameron’s final years, saying she had been in a “world of darkness” and “knew she was losing her mind”.

He said she would ask her daughter: “Will you kill me? You know how to do it, Clare. Will you kill me?” His sister recalls replying: “Mum, even if I did know how to kill you, I don’t want to go to prison for murdering my mother.”

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Lord Cameron has led calls for drugs which have previously been rejected for use on the NHS to be approved for treating Alzheimer’s. While treatments such as lecanemab and donanemab have advanced the field of treatments, other medicines are far cheaper and experts know already about the risk of side-effects for some of them.

They were licensed in 2024, but are not available on the NHS outside clinical trials. Along with dozens of dementia specialists, Lord Cameron has also called for a maximum 18-week wait for a diagnosis of the disease.

Amid a debate about the future of social care, the peer also expressed regret over his government’s failure to introduce a cap on care costs, and suggested an insurance-based system could help protect families from exceptionally large bills.

“The thing I wish we had looked at more was a sort of insurance-based system, perhaps with the government front-running the insurance, as we did with terrorist damage,” he told the Telegraph.

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