Eczema Patients Have Lost Faith In Treatment: Survey

"); jQuery("#212 h3").html("

Related News Programmes

"); });

2022-09-13 HKT 20:53

Share this story

facebook

  • Eczema patients have lost faith in treatment: survey

A international survey has found that only 37 percent of eczema patients in the city are working on treatment plans with doctors, while two-thirds have lost hope.

GlobalSkin, an international alliance of dermatology patient organisations, initiated the study covering 330 eczema patients in the SAR, South Korea and Australia in August, with one-third of the respondents in Hong Kong.

Dermatologist Dr Johnny Chan said on Tuesday that the proportion of patients in the city seeking medical advice is “very low”.

He said more than 90 percent of them are being treated by public practitioners, but strained medical resources due to the Covid-19 pandemic have delayed their treatment.

“The queue time of every [eczema] treatment will be two to three years at the moment," he said, adding that does not taken into account the impact Covid has had on waiting times even longer.

“While they are waiting, they think the treatments will not be helping them, and may lose the faith in treatment. They think it’s just incurable, they don’t want to have any treatment anymore,” Chan said.

“Public doctors have a limited time to see a lot of patients every day."

But for moderate to severe cases, he said, "they need some more time for explanations about the disease nature: to have a more tailor-made treatment plan for the patients, and to explain any possible side effects and the way to avoid these side effects.”

Chan added that less than 10 percent of eczema sufferers had sought treatment from the private sector. He said high costs was "very much an issue" here, with 72 percent of patients saying the heavy financial burden had deterred them from visiting doctors.

Dr Marco Ho, who chairs the Hong Kong Allergy Association, said when treatment is delayed, a patients’ immune system further deregulates and their conditions worsen, hence their expectations in consultations can be over-optimistic.

“Sometimes you don’t have the best-matched medication treatment as well as therapies. They have a whole lot of ideas and their own personal belief, so end up when we say ‘control’, they say ‘cure’; when we say ‘short-term gain’, they want a ‘long-term' remission,” he said.

“At times we even think the patient needs hospitalisation [but] they can't afford to stop their work or school.”

To clear up such misinterpretations and handle mental problems when patients are suffering from skin conditions, the allergy association and a concern group under the Hong Kong Health Care Alliance launched a free online counseling service on Tuesday that will run for three months.

RECENT NEWS

TOPPAN Edge Becomes Japans First Qualified VLEI Issuer

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF) has announced TOPPAN Edge, a subsidiary of TOPPAN Holdings that p... Read more

SFC And Dubais DFSA Partner On Cross-Border Regulatory Cooperation

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA), the independent regulator of the Dubai International Financial Centre (D... Read more

Toss To Launch Finance Super-App In Australia, Plans Won-Based Stablecoin

South Korea’s fintech unicorn Toss is preparing to launch its finance super-app in Australia before the end of this y... Read more

China Funds Research On Stablecoins And Cross-Border Oversight

China’s largest government-backed research funder has begun accepting applications for studies on stablecoins and the... Read more

XTransfer, CZBank Shanghai Branch Form Cross-Border Finance Partnership

XTransfer has entered into a partnership with the Shanghai branch of China Zheshang Bank (CZBank). The agreement was si... Read more

Brinc Launches VentureVerse Through Acquisition Of OG Club

Brinc, a Hong Kong-based venture acceleration and corporate innovation firm, has acquired OG Club, a decentralised auto... Read more