October 29 is World Psoriasis Day. Conceived by patients for patients, World Psoriasis Day is a truly global event focusing on the burden of living with psoriasis. There are more than 125 million people with psoriasis/psoriatic arthritis in the world. Psoriasis is a severe chronic inflammatory disease that effects all ages, genders, races and ethnicities.
The recent progress in the understanding of the disease has been remarkable. Psoriasis is now considered as a potentially severe inflammatory disorder. It may impose major social, psychological, physical and health impairment on patients, promote metabolic syndrome, inflammatory and cardiovascular co-morbidities and reduce life expectancy.
According to the years of life lost due to disability and premature death, access to the appropriate treatment modalities is mandatory to improve the health perspectives of psoriasis patients. Psoriasis should be recognized as a disabling disease and treated accordingly. “A few years ago we didn’t talk about co-morbidities at all. Now, with this new information, we need a greater acceptance of psoriasis as a severe and complex disease, which calls for new coordinated approaches in the health care system”, says Professor Dr. Jörg C. Prinz, Department of Dermatology, University of Munich, Germany.
On World Psoriasis Day October 29, the International Federation of Psoriasis Associations, IFPA, together with our member associations all over the world, is urging the World Health Organization and other official health authorities to react upon these new insights and develop means and measures to improve the health-associated impairments of the millions of psoriasis patients who are suffering all over world.
Psoriasis is a real disability that deserves attention!
New IFPA project released:
First of a kind documentary project follows people living with psoriasis to see the effects of the disease on their lives over time
Stockholm, Thursday October 29th, World Psoriasis Day, 2009: The International Federation of Psoriasis Associations (IFPA) today launches the Under the Spotlight project, designed to illuminate the impact that psoriasis has on individual lives, over time. A number of people living with psoriasis have agreed to allow cameras into their lives, to create a unique documentary project, to see how the disease affects them and impacts the course of their lives, socially, in relationships and particularly at work.
Today, the first of a series of documentary programmes is made available, featuring six people living in the Nordics region of Germany, Sweden and Denmark. This documentary, along with other shorter films about the contributors can be viewed on www.underthespotlight.com. The project is the first of its kind and is intended to create a community of people living with psoriasis around the world, where support and reassurance can be gained through shared experience. IFPA intends to broaden the reach of the project by World Psoriasis Day 2010, when other countries will join the project, and to continue to extend its reach over the next five years.
Meanwhile, the biggest ever international survey of people living with psoriasis has shown that the disease can cause significant and permanent damage to lives, with more than a third (37%) of the respondents stating that they will never be same person again, even if their psoriasis symptoms are cleared1.