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Charity Urges Chancellor To Invest In Medical Research.

Tuesday 21 March 2006

The Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke urges Chancellor Gordon Brown in his budget to ensure that much more money is directed to Medical Research.

The Northern Ireland Chest Heart and Stroke urges Chancellor Gordon Brown in his budget to ensure that much more money is directed to Medical Research.

Andrew Dugal, chief executive of NICHSA said “Despite that fact that we are a country with high taxation and the United States of America is a country of low taxation, in the UK the state spends much less on medical research than in the United States. It is important that the Government ensures that there are advances in both the prevention and the treatment of serious illnesses. Medical Research in the United Kingdom is heavily dependent on Medical Research Charities.

NI Chest Heart & Stroke has been funding medical research from 1946 first into TB and then into other chest illness as well as heart disease and stroke. During the 1950’s it was possible to overcome the ravages of TB among the Northern Ireland population with the introduction of a new drug Streptomycin.

In the United States huge sums of money are spent by the National Institutes of Health into major areas of disease. The UK has one of the lowest per capita spends on research by the state and Northern Ireland in particular has the lowest within the United Kingdom. In recent weeks NICHSA received applications for research grants totalling £1.7 million pounds. In fact we have only just over £300k to allocate.

NICHSA urges that money should be ring fenced for research into serious lung conditions such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Research into these illnesses has been neglected in the past and the Research and Development Office should ensure a priority for research into these illnesses which cause so much suffering in our community. This has been a neglected area for many years.

[b]TABACO TAX[/b]

The charity is also urging that increases in taxation on tobacco products should be well above the level of inflation. It is only in this way with real increases in the cost of smoking that it is possible to persuade people to quit the smoking habit. This tool along with many other strategies in combating the epidemic of disease caused by tobacco smoking must work together to ensure a healthier population within the United Kingdom.

ENDS.

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