Love your bones- celebrate the Osteoporosis day with care

20th October is celebrated as osteoporosis day worldwide which is organized by International Osteoporosis Foundation. They come up with a yearlong campaign every year in order to create awareness about the osteoporosis and the bone diseases. The campaign remains dedicated to the global awareness about diagnoses, preventions, and treatments of osteoporosis and metabolic bone diseases. The osteoporosis patients’ societies around the world participate in the movement and help to generate awareness in more than 90 countries.

National osteoporosis society of UK launched this campaign late back in 1996 with the support of European commission. IOF became the official organizers in 1997 and in 1998 World Health Organization became the co-sponsors of the campaign. Every year, this day is celebrated in keeping a particular theme in mind. This year, ‘Love your bones, protect your future’ is the campaign with the agenda of reaching out the health-care professionals, the media, the policy makers and public to keep their joints, bones, and muscles healthy. Fractures caused by osteoporosis lead to a devastated state of millions of the people around the globe which has resulted in the socio-economical and medical imbalance in the world. According to the previous year’s data only 10% of the older women received the osteoporosis therapy. Around 12.3 million people are considered at high risk of osteoporotic fracture which  has remained untreated in Europe.

The campaign take calls on the general public to take early actions to protect their bones and muscles to lead a good quality of life. For the health authorities and physicians, it stresses on the need to protect their community’s bone health. By ‘closing the care gap’ through timely assessment, we can reduce the risk and the socio-economic burden on the fragile fractures.

 

Let’s see what the campaign specifically aims this year:

 Promote worldwide awareness of osteoporosis and the heavy toll the disease can take on an individual’s future if left undiagnosed and untreated.

 Educate the public about the specific risk factors that increase the risk of osteoporosis and fractures.

 Encourage individuals who have risk factors, including first fractures, to seek testing and treatment if required in order to protect their longer-term future.

 Advocate for preventive care worldwide: enable healthcare professionals and health authorities to close the persistent ‘care gap’ by addressing critical issues such as under-diagnosis and under-treatment, lack of Fracture Liaison Services to systematically identify and treat high-risk patients, and poor adherence to treatment.