For violating current legislation regarding age limits for monitoring adolescents with Idiopathic Inflammatory Diseases Illnesses Intestine Disease (IBD) in Pediatric Hospitals, says the Association of People with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis in Greece.
As he notes, he receives reports from parents of children with IBD who are treated in Hospital Agia Sophia Infantil, who, by decision of the Directorate of Medical Services, the monitoring of her children in the external IBD consultation, their admission to the Pediatric Clinics for injection of biological agents, their hospitalization due to relapses of the disease due to having exceeded the age of 16 years is suddenly interrupted.
The association emphasizes that the legislation in force (ministerial decision no. C5a/GPok.79678) is clear: Patients with chronic diseases who are monitored by special units are examined in Pediatric Hospitals, Pediatric Departments/Clinics, outpatient clinics of the bodies of ESY and in private clinics up to 18 years of age.
IBD is a serious chronic disease and patients are monitored exclusively by specialist doctors, such as the pediatric gastroenterologists at Agia Sophia Children’s Hospital, which even operates a separate IBD clinic.
Abruptly stopping follow-up care for children with IBD poses serious risks in terms of continuing to receive medical care, worsening the course of the disease, causing relapses and complications, which ultimately result in a serious financial burden on the healthcare system.
For this reason, the Association of People with Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis in Greece calls on all those responsible to implement the current legislation and to continue the uninterrupted follow-up of all adolescent IBD patients up to the age of 18 at Hagia Sophia Children’s Hospital, as is done for chronic patients in almost all European Hospitals.
Also poses for him Minister of HealthAdonis Georgiadis, the following question: “How is it possible that doctors appointed to top management and administrative positions in pillar hospitals violate the law, harming children’s health, without being subject to any control by the State and without having no effect? Thus, the State gives them the freedom to act as they wish and to impose, from their position, the violation of laws on all their subordinate employees”.
For all these reasons, we call on the Ministry of Health to take charge of the matter, “as this is a clear violation of the law, causing harm to the health of chronic patients”.