We were among the more than 20.000 participants that traveled to London from the 3rd till the 7th of September for the European Society Respiratory Congress. Among them a strong representation of patients and patient organisations had the chance to showcase their activities and to discuss with researchers, healthcare professionals and industries the needs of people living with respiratory conditions and the latest development in the field.
EFA would like to thank ELF and the ERS for providing us free registrations and booth, and one bursary for us and congratulates ERS for this impressive congress!
We presented our latest research on young people with asthma. We presented the HEY YA! findings in a thematic poster session on asthma management in primary care, on Sunday 4th September. The chairs of the session, J. Correia de Sousa, D. Ryan, M. Levy and A. Sheikh, were impressed about the outcomes and congratulated EFA for having succeeded in involving such a large number of adolescents from different countries in the study.
The World Village was the hub for participants and national, European and International organisations: a lounge area served for networking and developing partnership; several desks were assigned to patient organisations and European projects, among which EARIP, AirPROM and U-BIOPRED); a World Village Theatre was dedicated to presentations of patient organisations’ activities, where many EFA members, such as FFAAIR, FederASMA e ALLERGIE Onlus, the Polish Federation of Asthma, Allergy and COPD Patients’ Organisations, Longfonds, Asthma UK attended.
The programme of the Congress provided plenty of sessions and activities of relevance for the patients, starting from the Patient Organisations Networking day which was held before the Opening Ceremony on Saturday 3rd.
European projects with a direct involvement of patient experts had also great visibility: myAirCoach intermediate results were presented in several poster presentations, as well as EARIP which also organised a symposium and a reception at the House of Commons.
We were very happy to see that a lot of progress has been made and that patient organisations’ role and impact is more and more recognised in such an important medical congress. We hope to see a strong attendance and involvement also next year in Milan!