International Alliance of Patient Organisations calls for patient-centred pain management strategies
September is International Awareness Month. Chronic pain is an issue that affects many people worldwide as a direct or indirect feature of numerous long-term diseases. However, despite affecting a huge and diverse patient population over many disease areas, the enormity of the challenges faced by patients living with chronic pain is often under-appreciated globally. It is for this reason that the International Alliance of Patients’ Organizations (IAPO) joined efforts to mark International Pain Awareness Month 2018 as a way of “calling out” for pain to be regarded as a global health priority and recognised as a shared problem among all patient communities.
IAPO’s Declaration on Patient-Centred Healthcare outlines that, despite representing patients from many different disease backgrounds, the focus remains on addressing the common needs of all patient communities regardless of their disease area. As chronic pain affects many different patient populations over a diverse range of disease areas, the subject of pain is highly relevant to IAPO’s core value of patient-centred healthcare.
As part of IAPO’s efforts towards raising awareness on issues concerning pain and pain management, it has called for health stakeholders to develop and prioritise healthcare strategies to ensure that those who suffer from pain have access to appropriate and effective patient-centred pain therapies.
Painaustralia added its support to the campaign by joining the global social media campaign, and spreading awareness about chronic, acute and cancer pain. We had good engagement on many of our messages, in particular the Painful Facts infographics, that resonated with many people.