IBD can affect anyone, at any stage of life, according to the hospital. Every year, about 300 children and young people in the Netherlands are diagnosed with IBD. For adults, that number is 2,000. A (complete) cure is not yet in sight.
All 90,000 people in the Netherlands with IBD are not always able to do what is so normal for others: work, play sports or be socially active. While there is nothing to see in them, the disease continuously leaves a mark on their daily lives, among young and old. The latter is therefore the worldwide theme of May 19 this year: ‘IBD knows no age’.
The Albert Schweitzer Hospital IBD treatment team works closely with colleagues from other hospitals in the region to provide the best quality and most effective IBD care to patients of all ages. They do that all year round. But on May 19, they also want to achieve something else, which is to tell as many people as possible that IBD exists, what it is and what it means to live with it.
The hospital says that IBD patients could use a little more understanding and attention. That is why the hospital in Dordrecht is bathed in purple light, the international symbol of World IBD Day, on the evenings of 18 and 19 May. The light stays on all night.
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