Aice President's Hunger Strike: "The Epilepsy Law Is Stopped"

Giovanni Battista Pesce, father of a girl with drug-resistant cryptogenic epilepsy and president of the Italian Association against Epilepsy (Aice), has begun a hunger strike in front of the Ministry of Health. Pesce is asking for the technical report requested a year ago by the Senate Budget Committee to be delivered so that the legislative process of the bill no. 898 "Provisions for the protection of people affected by epilepsy" can resume until approval. The protest was announced about two weeks ago. "For a year - explains the association in an open letter to the President of the Republic Mattarella and to the ministers Schillaci, Locatelli and Giorgetti - the missing Technical Report has blocked the discussion for the approval of a first Law for Full Citizenship to 550 thousand People with epilepsy and their Families. Of the few blessed ones who recover, more than 30% of people with epilepsy are drug-resistant, take the drugs and also experience seizures. This despite a hyperbolic market of medicines, not curative, only symptomatic and with significant side effects. With a seizure you are subject to just limitations, unfairly you are denied adequate inclusive measures. The inclusion of people with drug-resistant epilepsy is the first objective that AICE intends to achieve in this Legislature".