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S a n o f i & U C M S
Multiple sclerosis: Era of new opportunities
Discussing innovative treatment availability issues for patients with multiple sclerosis at state level
Attracting public attention to Ukrainians diagnosed with this rare disease.
Every year, at the end of May, the World Multiple Sclerosis Day is observed all over the world. The causes of this rare disease development are still unknown. All people, even the young ones aged 18 to 34, are at risk. Although subsidies and access to innovative drugs for Ukrainians diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) are increasing every year, official statistics on the diagnosis and treatment of the disease are disappointing. According to the latest independent study (IFAK Institute GmbH & Co, 2018) in Ukraine, 57 people per 100 thousand are diagnosed with MS (while in Hungary this number is 176, in the Czech Republic — 140, and in Poland — 120).
The Ukrainian Community of People with MS (UCMS) and Sanofi-Ukraine decided to hold a press conference "Multiple Sclerosis: An Era of New Opportunities. Are We Ready for It?". The conference took place on May 28th, and its aim was to draw public attention to the issues of MS treatment in Ukraine as well as to the problem of late MS diagnosis in the country.
Why are these issues still important and relevant to discuss? About 65% of MS patients indicated that they didn’t have access to effective medication (10% of required treatment in Ukraine is covered by a government program). One in three patients with multiple sclerosis notes that it took a year for a doctor to diagnose MS (13% say about 5 years). But if multiple sclerosis had been diagnosed earlier and treated with the suggested innovative therapy, up to 68% of patients would not have become disabled and could have been able to study and work. To compare, in Estonia (80%) and Hungary (45%) patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis work full-time or part-time.
Besides inviting journalists to the press conference as our task, we also had to help organizers to shed light on the above-mentioned problems in the Ukrainian mass media most popular among the representatives of government agencies.
As a result, representatives of such top media as "NV.UA", "24TV", "Suspilne" joined the press conference while one of the most popular Ukrainian media resources "Ukrainska Pravda" got interested in the opportunity to take an exclusive interview with Tetyana Nehrych, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Neurological Department of Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University and Chairman of the Lviv Regional Community of Neurologists.
As a result, more than 20 publications about modern problems of MS patients appeared in mass media over the week. The interview with Tetyana Nehrych published in "Ukrainska Pravda '' received 19 000 unique views in just one day. That proves the fact of public interest in solving the problems of Ukrainians with MS and the relevance of the discussed issues with access to innovative treatment in 2021.