This week to mark Alzheimer's Awareness Week, Emma Barnett speaks to the daughter of a sufferer of the condition.

TO watch someone you love suffering from an illness which affects both their mind and their physical health is a hard thing to have to deal with.

But when there is very little information about the illness available, the sufferer's friends and family are left even more in the dark.

Linda Francis, of Chandlers Ford, was in a similar situation when she found her father was suffering from Alzheimer's Disease.

She is supporting Alzheimer's Awareness Week (on until Saturday) to ensure others are made more aware of the disease, which currently affects more than 700,000 people in the UK.

Mrs Francis said when her father, who died in January aged 83, first became ill, it was not clear what the problem was.

"He showed signs about eight years ago. It was generalised under the heading of dementia. The early signs were when he started to repeat things, he was so forgetful.

"He lived at home to begin with, until it was 24 hours, seven-day-a-week care. My mother's in her 80s so we looked around for a home. She went to visit him every day and I went to visit him from time to time, so there was constant keeping the familiarity with the family because that was beginning to go.

"But however hard it got there was always something to recognise my mother. Towards the end he could not even speak, but there was always a smile."

Mrs Francis, a-50-year-old teacher at Princess Mead Junior School in Winchester, added: "As a child you have to really support the parent who's still with it, because they are the ones who are having to go through their partner's deterioration.

"Initially it's easier because you are not so close to realise things are going wrong, but it took my mother a long time to come to terms with it, that he'd got Alzheimer's.

"It's coming to terms with it and understanding it because I think my mother didn't want to understand what the consequences were."

With so little knowledge around about Alzheimer's Disease, Mrs Francis said one of the hardest things for the family was to understand what her father was going through.

"It's just keeping that connection going and not really understanding what they are aware of because in his case he lost his speech. You really don't know if there's really a function there.

"It was really not knowing how much he understood. That was the sad point."

Mrs Francis contacted the Alzheimer's Society in Southampton to try and find out more about her father's condition, but thinks information on the disease should be more readily available.

"In my mother's case I think she preferred not to know, where as I contacted the Alzheimer's Society and got booklets and leaflets so I would understand what was coming. I knew what was coming where as she took each day as it came.

"I think there's still perhaps not enough. There's more now in the last year or two, but I think in the early stages there wasn't enough written about it, so apart from getting in touch with the Alzheimer's Society it was difficult to understand and prepare for the future."

But the future is looking brighter for Alzheimer's sufferers as a new vaccine is currently being tested in Southampton.

Dr David Wilkinson, from the memory assessment and research centre at Moorgreen, said the centre is one of four working on the new vaccine worldwide. The other research centres are in Bath, Cardiff and Swindon.

"Obviously it's still in development at the moment. Part of the biggest problem with Alzheimer's is the development of a protein called Amyloid (CORR) in the brain.

"In animal experiments they've found that in mice that if you give them an injection of an anti-body to this Amyloid that it does not accumulate in the brain and, in fact, starts to disappear in mice that have already got it."

Dr Wilkinson said even if all goes well with the drug tests, it will not be available to humans until at least another five years, but said he is hopeful that the vaccine will be a huge success.

"I think it's an extremely exciting development. I think if even ten per cent of the effects in mice worked in humans this would be a major step forward."

The Alzheimer's Society is issuing leaflets and booklets during Alzheimer's Awareness Week to try and help others understand the disease.

The organisation has displays in the main entrance of Southampton General Hospital at the Civic Centre library and at Boots in Above Bar all week and will be holding a flag day in the city centre on Friday(JUL6) and a collection and display at Tesco's supermarket in Eastleigh on Saturday(JUL7).

To find out more about the Southampton centre call 023 8047 4657.