Member News – May-July 2016
Pain UK
To increase knowledge of chronic pain in UK’s members of parliament (MPs) an “early day motion” (EDM) – or petition – on chronic pain has been set up. After an MP has drafted the EDM, we can all ask our own MP to sign – and the more that sign up, the more coverage the EDM is likely to get and the more MPs are likely to have Chronic Pain raised to the forefront of their minds.
Some of the points raised by the EDM are that the 20 per cent, or 1 in 5, of the European population has chronic pain and that 1 in 20 of our population live with severe pain, with a one in four having severe, intense and highly disabling chronic pain. It explains that there are an estimated 4.6 million GP appointments each year for chronic pain in the UK costing £69 million, which equates to 793 full-time GPs because chronic pain sufferers attend their GP five times more frequently than other patients. It notes that the overall quality of life in the presence of chronic pain is shown to very low and all dimensions of health, including physical, psychological and social are severely reduced with a 10-year mortality higher among those with severe chronic pain, particularly death from heart of respiratory disease which is twice the rate of those without severe chronic pain.
