2023 Children with RMDs: How to deal with stigma and related challenges

Agora organised on March 24, 2023,  a webinar entitled “Children with RMDs: How to deal with stigma and related challenges” .

Children with RMDs are a particularly vulnerable group. It is still little known among the general public that children can be affected by RMDs at all. These children and their families face many challenges and obstacles in their daily lives at school and in their free time. In many southern European and eastern European countries, RMDs are associated with a stigmatisation of the child that affects the whole family. 

In our webinar, wel presented  the personal story of Athanasia Pappa from Greece, who was diagnosed with JIA at the age of only 7. Her experience inspired her to write the children’s fairy tale “My Friend NIA.RA”, which won one of the Best Practice Fair Awards at the EULAR PARE Conference 2022 in Brussels. In addition, Rebecca and Richard Beesley from the United Kingdom, who are parents to a 10-year-old daughter with JIA, gave their perspective. Andri Phoka Charalambous, our President and President  of CYPLER,  presented her organisation’s activities to raise awareness of the problem among policy makers and other key government officials, and to raise awareness and train teachers to be better informed and better able to support affected children.

The webinar was moderated by Katy Antonopoulou, Head of Communications of our Federation.

We would like to thank EULAR PARE who gave us the idea to organise this webinar as the same was organised by EULAR PARE previous to ours.