The pandemic’s convulsions are still reverberating across societies but, with the virus held at bay with vaccines, the focus reverts to the more insidious and growing threat posed by a rapidly ageing population with co-morbidities.
Healthcare systems, weakened by the corrosion of COVID-19, must now wrestle with alarming rises in chronic disease afflicting a demographic of over- 65-year-olds that will reach more than a quarter by 2050, a rise of 70% in 20 years.1
Worryingly, a report by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industry Associations (EFPIA) revealed that 25% of the working age population is already living with a chronic disease while 36% of EU adults over 65 have two chronic diseases2 with devastating impacts on family life, society, economies and healthcare systems.
It is a lethal challenge without a silver bullet solution. But the ability of industry, academia, innovators and governments to collaborate to create, manufacture and distribute effective vaccines is the template to meet and neutralise these alarming demographics.
Collaborations and partnerships are flourishing and providing hope across Europe and Ed Piper, Medical & Scientific Affairs Director at AstraZeneca UK, is at the spear tip of the organisation’s growing array of projects deployed at the coal face of UK healthcare.
“The trajectory of the epidemiology for patients with long-term conditions is only going in one direction,” he says. “There are some startling statistics about patient numbers expected in ten years’ time, which is why we have to get more efficient at getting medicines to patients to enable better outcomes.
“Health services are always challenged but they are now under severe capacity constraints and we believe that there are partnerships where AstraZeneca, and organisations like us, can play a really valuable part in helping services get better outcomes for their patients.”
Read the article in full here.
