BARBARA Windsor’s widow has called on the Government to set up a Covid-like task force to tackle dementia.
Speaking exclusively to GB News, Scott Mitchell said: “We first saw Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister in 2019 to talk about social care and funding for dementia patients where there’s nothing in place within the NHS for dementia patients.
“You’re basically on your own when you get the diagnosis.
“Now, when I did go back to see Boris Johnson, just before he left, he committed to the pledge that there would be the doubling of research to £160 million. Also, I’d written to him in my role as ambassador for Alzheimer’s Research UK on something they’d come up with, which was to have a dementia task force like we had with the Covid vaccine, but specifically for dementia.
“And it was there that Boris said, ‘I have put £95 million aside for that, I’ve listened to everyone and with your blessing we’d like to call it the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission’ which was wonderful.
“But it’s not just about Barbara, this is about going forward with dementia. This task force specifically would help speeding up trials and treatments. We need to attack dementia at the core. I mean, at this point, it costs the economy £25 billion a year and that’s dementia alone.
Asked what his message for Rishi Sunak would be, he told Dan Wooton on GB News: “I understand that cuts are going to happen everywhere, but please look at the big picture of this. It’s been ignored and kicked down the road.
“For many, many years, you have had a major health crisis. This kills more people in the UK than any other disease. It has killed more women in the UK for the past 11 years than any other illness.
“We’re not talking about a minor illness. We’re talking about a health crisis, also affected by the social care crisis, because it also blocks up NHS beds when dementia patients can’t be released because there’s no social care in place.”
He added: “That’s the cruelness of dementia and Alzheimer’s. It strips you of your life really and especially for the loved ones who have to watch this, and so you’re slowly losing that person and it is the most heart-breaking thing that you can see.
Speaking about new book, By Your Side: My Life Loving Barbara Windsor, he also told Dan Wooton about the struggles of the last few months supporting his beloved late wife: “It was a very difficult thing, and I don’t think anyone wants to really accept it – which one of us would want to accept it?
“Towards the end, we spoke to her and said, ‘look, we’re going to have to go public with this’. The main thing about going public with it was, I explained to her, that she’d be helping other people which it did in a massive way.
“They called it the Barbara Windsor effect in the dementia world. It kind of gave other people permission to talk about it. So, her legacy to me is so special when it comes to the world of dementia.”
Telling GB News that he can sometimes feel her presence he added: “You know, when people say that you feel a presence, it is like an aura that you feel.
“At times I’m in the house and I just get a very strange feeling come over me. And I may look at a picture of her, I may hear some music, and I just feel very safe, and a really wonderful feeling comes over me and to me.
“I believe that’s Barbara’s spirit. I believe she’s around.
“She always said, ‘when I go love, be upset, please be broken but after that, I want you to have the best life possible because that’s what I did’…
“She did and she was a generous, incredible human. Barbara as we all know, was the most vibrant person and together we – it should never have worked. You know, on paper it should never have worked.
We laughed when we first got together. They all said it will never last, but lo and behold 27 years later, I was still by her side.”
