AEPSO Argentina launches digital map to find people with psoriasis in the country

Psoriasis, recognised today by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a painful and incapacitating non communicable chronic disease, affects more than 800 000 Argentineans. AEPSO (Asociación Civil para el Enfermo de Psoriasis) celebrates its 10th anniversary raising awareness and supporting the rights of the patients. In order to better know what is going on with the disease in Argentina and to reach out the different communities, AEPSO has launched an interactive digital map, accessible through Facebook, that aims to identify and connect all psoriasis patients in each corner of the country.

Silvia Fernández Barrio, president and founder of AEPSO, has acknowledged that social networks have contributed to show unknown realities that they wish to work on for the benefit of the patients: “This is why this map came about, a tool that will give precise information where persons with psoriasis in Argentina live, and thus better help each one of them, guide them to informed professionals and to centres where they can get the treatment they need, as well as to create ties among patients going through the same experience in their community. In a territory as vast and with different realities we have to take advantage of technology as an opportunity to shorten distance and time”.

During the next 10 years, Beatriz Larrea, Executive Director of AEPSO, said that “we would like to achieve a presence of groups of people with psoriasis in every region of the country. That there are patients gathering, giving their time and sharing their experiences and knowledge in order to help others to better cope with their reality”.
One of the greatest obstacles that a psoriasis patients still faces is ignorance. There are patients that do not see a doctor because of the old prejudice that this is a disease that there is nothing you can do, so they give up. “Nothing could be farther from the truth”, exclaimed Silvia Fernández Barrio, adding “those people we must reach them through AEPSO; so that they know who we are, that we are here to help them, guide them, provide them with information and suggest where they can start to treat themselves. Their life can change, and is going to change”.

“We strive to achieve that no patient across the country lives withouth diagnosis or treatment; we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we know this is the way”, added the president of AEPSO.

You can find the map at:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/AEPSO/103448854973?sk=app_1497274527196166