Munich (dpa / lby) - People suffering from a rare disease often need many years to get a diagnosis. "It is frightening that patients with a rare disease still go through an odyssey through large parts of our medicine for an average of seven years before their disease is finally diagnosed!" said the Bavarian patient and care officer, Peter Bauer, on Tuesday with. According to him, more than 600,000 people in Bavaria are affected by such a disease, and there are around four million in Germany.
On the occasion of the International Day of Rare Diseases on Tuesday, Bauer therefore wants to sensitize employees in the health professions to the topic. These should support people with rare diseases on the way to diagnosis and get advice from contact points, said Bauer. There are centers for rare diseases at all Bavarian university clinics. Databases could help with the diagnosis by searching for symptoms. In addition, pilots from the Alliance for Rare Chronic Diseases support physicians in their search for specialists.
