BHF comment
The charity funding crisis threatens the future of research in the UK
Our medical director Professor Sir Nilesh Samani writes that the funding crisis medical research charities are experiencing during the Covid-19 pandemic could have a range of long term effects on research, and ultimately on treatment and care.
The best way to illustrate what is at stake in this crisis, is to look at the long-term trends. In the 1970s, one in every two people died from a heart attack, often prematurely with a devastating effect on families. This has now been reduced to less than one on four and similar progress has been made for any other heart and circulatory diseases.
Central to this remarkable success story is the constant improvement in the treatment and care heart and circulatory patients have received over time, all of which has been powered by scientific research. The vital journey of research from the lab bench to bedside has saved countless lives over the past 50 years. And charities such as the British Heart Foundation play a critical role in facilitating this – we currently fund over half of all independent research into heart and circulatory diseases.
Far-reaching impact
But the Covid-19 pandemic, and its far-reaching economic impact is now threatening to arrest the pace of progress. Since late March, all 750 BHF shops which raise vital funds for our research have been closed, and only now are we tentatively starting to open up a small number. Other fundraising events from the London Marathon to our flagship London to Brighton bike ride have been either delayed or cancelled. In short, the means by which we raise money to fund research came to an abrupt standstill.
All of this means that our income this year has been devastated, and this inevitably has a knock-on effect on the amount of research we fund. We estimate that our budget for investing in new research will halve this year from around £100 million to around £50 million – a sharp drop which could take years to recover to current levels. The same crippling challenges are being faced by research charities across the country.
But this crisis is about more than charity budgets – it imperils the future of research in the UK. The BHF currently supports a research portfolio of around £450 million at 47 institutions across the UK, directly funding the salaries of more than 1,700 researchers and supporting the research of many others. If this funding is diminished, then it will have a profound effect on universities and research institutions across the UK, and ultimately risks slowing that crucial pipeline of research advances that in time will save lives across the world.
Working with Government to preserve UK research
It would be a tragedy if we allowed the Covid-19 pandemic to threaten years of hard-fought progress in finding treatments and cures for some of the world’s biggest killers. We owe it to future generations of patients to keep funding research to find the next breakthroughs. That is why the charity sector must work more closely than ever with Government to protect research investment.
The BHF, along with the Association of Medical Research Charities and organisations including Cancer Research UK and Parkinson’s UK, is urging the Government to establish a Life Sciences-Charity Partnership Fund, where Government matches charity investment, so life-saving research is protected through this toughest of times.
If the Government does choose to support medical research in this way, it will do much to preserve the UK’s reputation as a world leader in scientific innovation in the years to come. If charitable research funding becomes a casualty of the pandemic, it will leave our country diminished at a time when the need for research breakthroughs have never been more important.