ONE of the country's leading dementia consultants based in Savernake Hospital, Dr Simon Manchip, is thinking of quitting the NHS because of government penny-pinching.

He said he may carry out his threat if the government goes ahead with plans to stop paying for memory boosting drugs that extend the independent lives of dementia sufferers.

He said continual cost cutting and calls for cut-backs in spending were making him have second thoughts about continuing to work within the NHS.

"For the first time in my career I am contemplating leaving the NHS because I am not being allowed to do my job properly."

Pioneering work at Savernake Hospital into restoring the memory of dementia patients will be halted if government cost-cutting plans go ahead.

Under new health service proposals no new patients would receive the revolutionary treatment that costs about the same daily as one pint of beer.

The Farmer Unit at the Marlborough Hospital and the Kingshill Research Centre in Swindon have worked together on finding drugs that give Alzheimer's patients their memories back for anything between two and six years.

The families of those treated have said there was no way of calculating financially the benefit the patients and their loved ones received because the treatment extended their independent lives.

Patients currently being treated with the memory boosting drugs will continue with the treatment.

However draft proposals by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence has said the drugs are not cost effective and should not be given to new patients.

If the government follows the NICE recommendation there is now a three week consultation period the use of the memory drugs through the NHS will be stopped.

Dr Manchip, the consultant in old age psychiatry at Savernake Hospital is urging families of patients who have benefited from the treatment to write letters of objection to the proposal and send them to him to forward to NICE.

In the medical profession the wonder drugs that bring back memory or improve it for anything between two and six years are called cognitive enhancers.

Dr Manchip has been working at the Farmer Unit at Savernake for more than six years with a team of assistants endeavouring to minimise the effects of Alzheimers and other dementia conditions.

Nationally around 50,000 people are treated with the drugs, the most widely used of which is donepezil that is sold under the trade name of Aricept.

Other drugs used as memory enhancers include rivastigmine and galantamine that have a number of trade names.

They cost on average about £1,000 per patient and as well as delaying the progression of Alzheimer's they actually restore failing memory.

Dr Manchip said: "The drugs completely transform the lives of not only the patients but also their families."

He said Alzheimer's is not restricted to geriatric patients and the farmer Unit treats sufferers as young as in their 50s.

"At the moment we have 85 people who are remaining stable because of the treatment," the consultant said.

"They remain stable for two years on average but sometimes for as long as six years."

The treatment, said Dr Manchip, enabled people to retain their independence and live in their own homes without having to move in with relatives to be looked after or admitted to hospitals or nursing homes.

"Putting somebody in a nursing home costs the National Health Service and Social Services about £26,000 a year.

"It makes much more sense to let them have the drugs that cost a lot less and enable them to carry on living in their own homes and, in many cases, independent lives."

Dr Manchip said: "If we keep just four people out of nursing homes then we save the state about £100,000 a year."

Currently the Farmer Unit has 450 patients on its books with varying degrees of dementia.

About 370 are able to continue living at home, with 85 of those enabled to do so because they receive the memory boosting drugs.

Alzheimer's, said the specialist, was an insidious disease that crept up on people and robbed them of some of their most important faculties, their memory and reasoning.