EUGA has joined an alliance of 26 organisations on the Urge to Act Campaign that aims at raising awareness on continence health problems. Incontinence is a very common urological condition which affects nearly half of all Europeans. Making tangible changes to European health policy on incontinence is vital to improving diagnoses and optimising patient outcomes through increased prevention, better care and access to supportive interventions and treatments.
Continence problems are a prevalent issue with consequences that are felt across all genders, regardless of age or socio-economic background. They are often the result of another condition or a side effect of treatment, are debilitating and often chronic, and can result in a serious negative impact on the patients’ quality of life. Physical, psychosocial and economic consequences for patients and their carers are common. While optimal continence health should be a reality for everybody, we must acknowledge that risk often correlates with age, and the burden of long-term care for people suffering from continence problems still falls disproportionately on women.
The good news is that there are many ways to improve continence health, and a lot more can be done to reduce the burden on patients, their carers, and society. “An Urge to Act” calls policymakers to recognise the burden of continence health problems, improve diagnosis and optimise patient outcomes in Europe through increased prevention, better care and access to supportive interventions, including treatment. An Urge to Act perfectly ties into European health initiatives such as collaborative programmes on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and research, as well as European legislation on waste management, green policies and the classification of continence-related products.
In November 2023, the alliance launched a socio-economic report and a manifesto with 10 calls for action. The report found that 55 to 60 million European suffer from Urinary Incontinence (UI), and that across all EU countries, the estimated economic burden of UI was €69.1 billion in 2023. UI is a very common side effect of cancer treatments, and with the advancement of oncological medicine we are having more and more cancer survivors with such side effects.
That is why the Urge to Act campaign is targeting all elements of the condition: the direct implication on the patient’s life, but also the financial impact on health systems, the increased need for specialised professionals, and the impact on productivity, both from the patients and carers side.
Publication in European Urology: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0302283825003240