Vitiligo Awareness Day, a NEED

© Ogo Maduewesi
From the Vitiligo Friends Forum

Vitiligo Awareness Day, a NEED

Vitiligo is a very disfiguring, devastating condition which can affect anyone.  In a society obsessed by appearance and where physical appearance is celebrated you can feel just helpless when your appearance is threatened, often stigmatized, traumatized, and ostracized. Children are frequently teased and ridiculed by their peers. Adults experience low self-esteem, job discrimination and it interferes with relationships and marriage prospects.
The current therapy for Vitiligo focuses on halting the Progression of the depigmentation with topical immunomodulators and encouraging repigmentation with phototherapy. However, success rates of these therapies is dramatically low, variable, and not permanent. Therefore, new therapeutic approaches are warranted. With many Vitiligo patients responding poorly to the current therapies, more focus should be directed to improve non-medical consequences of Vitiligo that include
Extensive awareness, enlightenment and education,
camouflages make-ups,
self-image support,
Availability and access to Vitiligo information for all,
General support and care, to name a few.

Above all extensive Vitiligo education, awareness and enlightenment campaign, this is because the Vitiligo patients needs to be accepted and treated equally without any form of stigma, discrimination and segregation to enable them take advantage of other self-help like camouflage make-up, image building programs ect.
The above is listed are exactly VITSAF’s core goal; truly we must devise a means to live healthy positive life till research is finally through with a cure for Vitiligo.

Thus our advocacy and campaign for World Vitiligo Day to bring the Vitiligo Cause to the World Center Stage, when the whole Media Channels in the World or atleast 50% of them talks about Vitiligo on every 25th of June for atleast 3years, same day the World will also be remembering Michael Jackson, there will be significant awareness on Vitiligo and improve in Quality of Life (QOL) of the Vitiligo patients. I believe strongly that all the stigma, discrimination and segregation are all due to ignorance. The patient’s trauma, low self esteem and no confidence is also due to the fact that they are misunderstood and neglected even within the medical community.

With extensive awareness on Vitiligo there will be a better understanding of the general public, attention and care within the medical community and Positive living of the patients. 

Join us lets educate the world about Vitiligo on 25th of June of every year starting from June 25, 2011!!!