site.btaEpileptic Patients in Bulgaria Face Lack of Medicines and Difficult Access to State-of-the-Art Tests - Patients' Association

Epileptic patients in Bulgaria have to deal with lack of medicines and difficult access to state-of-the-art tests, and these problems are not being addressed, President of the Association of Parents with Children with Epilepsy, Veska Sabeva, told reporters on Tuesday. She was speaking at an event held on the occasion of the Purple Day, the global day for epilepsy awareness. "We want to inform society that epilepsy is like any other disease and should be treated as one, and we have to end the stigma that exists," said Sabeva.

She said that epileptic children and their parents don't want to talk about the condition especially when it is a mild form. "They live with the hope that it will go away and it is exactly what happens in 70% of the cases but the thought about it lingers in the patient's mind," Sabeva said.

In her Association, there are many people who are very well educated and have a family but they would not come out to talk about their condition exactly because they don't want to be stigmatized, said Sabeva.

Her organization also wants to raise awareness of epilepsy among people so they can help if they witness a seizure. The person having a seizure must not be moved unless they are on stairs or on the street. They must be moved to one side with something soft put under their head to make sure they don't hurt themselves during a violent seizure. A person in seizure may bite their tongue and there may be blood but people shouldn't get scared. The most important thing one can do when they witness an epileptic seizure is to time it and call an ambulance if it lasts over 5 minutes. When the seizure passes, they should stay with the person for another 10-15 minutes because they are disoriented.

During the Tuesday event, students from a Sofia school and artist Ivan Yahnadjiev made paintings and handed out brochures on first aid for epilepsy seizure.

There are more than 20,000 children suffering from epilepsy in Bulgaria, according to the Association of Parents with Children with Epilepsy. Bulgaria does not have an official register of epilepsy patients. According to the World Health Organization, 1% of all Bulgarians have epilepsy. One in three of the nearly 65,000 Bulgarians affected by the disease are children. About 28,000 Bulgarian patients gets epilepsy medications that are paid for by the National Heal th Insurance Fund.