Call for Access to Game-Changing Eczema Treatment on RTÉ’s Ray D’Arcy Show

Listen to the full interview

 

Ray D’Arcy interviewed Paul Herriott, ISF Board Member, who has lived with eczema since childhood and Prof Alan Irvine, Consultant Dermatologist at St James’ Hospital and Children’s Health Ireland at Crumlin about the urgent need for access in Ireland to first-in-class drug (dupilumab), which has been available to patients elsewhere in Europe for over 2 years.

The ISF is calling on HSE management to reimburse dupilumab for patients with moderate-to-severe atopic eczema, who have exhausted other treatment options.

Paul discussed the significant impact living day-to-day with this condition can have on eczema patients. Paul said as an adult with eczema, the condition, “carries not only the social stigma and this unbearable itch, above everything else, but also it carries a psychological cost with it as well.”

When speaking about dupilumab, Prof Irvine said, “What we’ve seen in the last number of years is therapies specifically designed and targeted towards the immune abnormalities in eczema and dupilumab is just one of a number of drugs, but it is the first that was approved… in Europe in Autumn 2017.”

Prof Irvine went on to highlight the benefit reimbursement could have for the approximately 1,000* adults in Ireland living with a severe form of this disease when he said, “For about 80% of people it transforms their lives… their sleep, their relationships, their work, their quality of life just completely changes.”

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*Figure quoted by Prof Irvine in interview


For more information about atopic dermatitis and eczema, visit our main eczema page here.  If you need help or guidance about managing your eczema, contact the ISF Helpline here.