Mike Hedges AM Shows   support patients with IPF

Next week marks Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) week. IPF is a chronic and progressive lung disease, causes scarring of the lungs, hindering a person’s ability to breathe.

Around 32,000 people in the UK live with IPF. Around 2,100 people live with IPF in Wales.

IPF patients can expect to survive an average of three years from diagnosis, and only one in five will survive for more than five years. It is estimated that around 5,000 people per year will die of this disease that equates to around 1 in every 100 deaths a year and the number is increasing.

Mike Hedges AM Said… ‘I have met a number of people who have this debilitating and ultimately fatal condition; it really does have a massive impact on the sufferers. I think that it is vital that awareness of this condition is raised among the population. I am happy to support the British  Lung Foundation #IPF week. I will be attending the event at the Assembly next week and writing to the Minister.’

What can you do to show support?

1. Support the British Lung Foundation’s (BLF) campaign to raise awareness about IPF, a progressive respiratory condition that is diagnosed in about 6,000 people every year, by tweeting #IPFWeek
2. Join us at 11:20 on Wednesday 20^th September outside the front of the Senedd to get your photograph taken where we will be joined by patients, Health Care Professionals and staff as part of our work to raise awareness of IPF.
3. Write to the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport to ask him to ensure that pulmonary rehabilitation is a priority in the refreshed Respiratory Health Delivery Plan, providing exercise and education to people to manage COPD and IPF.
4. Write to your health board to ask what changes the respiratory health delivery plan has made to their local services and what plans they have to invest in pulmonary rehabilitation.