Collaborate specifically and synergistically to ensure adequate support and improve care for patients with multiple sclerosis and their families. This is the objective for which the Local Health Authority of Avellino and the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Association of Avellino, chaired by Carmela Iannaccone, have decided to sign a memorandum of understanding.
Multiple sclerosis, the Avellino Local Health Authority signs a memorandum of understanding with the AISM
Multiple sclerosis is a pathology characterized by an anomalous reaction of the immune defenses that attack some components of the central nervous system, mistaking them for foreign agents, and for this reason it falls under autoimmune pathologies. It can begin at any age in life, but is most commonly diagnosed in young adults between the ages of 20 and 40. At the moment there is no definitive cure, but numerous therapies are available that modify its progress, slowing down its progression. Treatments that allow those affected by this chronic disease to maintain a good quality of life with an expectation not far from those who do not receive this diagnosis.
The agreement, signed this morning at the Avellino ASL headquarters in Via degli Imbimbo by the general director Mario Nicola Vittorio Ferrante and Carmela Iannaccone, is aimed at improving the quality of life of people affected by the neurodegenerative disease that affects the nervous system central. The agreement, in fact, provides for the increase in care services aimed at patients, family members and caregivers who can contact the info-point active at the Australia Center where operators and specialists will be able to take action to provide concrete answers to their needs.
“Today we further sanction an already existing partnership. A necessary action and an important signal to give to the sick – stated the general director of the Avellino Local Health Authority – the facility made available at the Australia Center is essential to give support to those who need to deal with a disease that causes increasingly serious problems as time goes by. Doctor Malanga is animated by great intentions and is giving an excellent impulse regarding home care”.
“Together with the AISM of Avellino we want to favor direct relationships with patients and their families to support them in the diagnostic process and monitoring of the disease, facilitate access to tests and treatments, especially in cases of disability. It is necessary that the sick, all of them, have answers that are not silent, we must be ready to intervene to solve their problems and we must help them manage daily life better” he underlined.
The provincial president of AISM, Carmela Iannaccone, echoed this: “Our role will be to support those suffering from multiple sclerosis and related pathologies. There are many requests that come to us. I thank director Ferrante and doctor Malanga, who opened the doors of the ASL to help these patients”.
There are an estimated 2.8 million people with MS in the world, of which 1,200,000 in Europe. In Italy, approximately 130,000 people are estimated to be affected, with an incidence of approximately 3,400 cases per year. The most recent data regarding the number of multiple sclerosis patients in Avellino and its province are not encouraging. “Irpinia, a few years ago, was second only to Sardinia” says Iannaccone Sardegna (Sardinia has a double prevalence compared to the rest of Italy: 370 cases per 100,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian figure of 198, ed.). A worrying fact, the one concerning Irpinia, which finds an explanation in the correlation between climate and disease: “Not only the genetic factor, but also the climatic one has a strong impact, in particular humidity and heat” underlined the president provincial of AISM.
