The COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit are among the factors which have seen a drop in the amount of money charities are spending on medical research.
The decline has been revealed in a report released today by the Association of Medical Research Charities (AMRC), which Brain Tumour Research is proud to be a member of.
CEO of the association, Hilary Reynolds, said:"The financial year of 2019/20 was a challenging one, with the UK officially leaving the EU and the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the globe. Unsurprisingly, the research spend of fundraising charities dropped, moving towards its first substantial dip in over a decade.”
AMRC charities’ UK research expenditure fell to £1.7 billion in 2019/20. The financial year for most charities ended in March 2020 so this figure only captures the first couple of weeks of the pandemic. The AMRC collected data throughout 2020/21 and this shows the true scale of the impact: a £292 million drop in income, and a £270 million decrease in research funding.
Hilary added: "Our charities have done everything they can to protect the research they fund; digging into precious reserves, adapting fundraising methods, merging with one another, making redundancies, and cutting non-research activities. We’re proud of how hard they’ve fought to honour existing commitments to researchers and research but many have had to sacrifice future commitments. This will delay access to life-changing treatments and slow medical advances that are crucial to saving and improving lives. AMRC will continue to work with Government and stakeholders to secure sustainable support that gets our charities back on track and grows the UK’s capacity to save and improve lives through research."
Brain Tumour Research will continue to stand alongside the AMRC at this turbulent time – medical research is far too important for us not to do so. We remain grateful to our supporters who have stood by us over the last year in order to help keep research doing at our Centres of Excellence.
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