Doctors’ group to give free meds to gout patients

MANILA, Philippines — It’s a common ailment for those with lavish tastes—and for the convivial. But it really can strike anyone.

But good news for people affected by gout, or at least those among them who will be selected for this program by the Philippine Rheumatology Association (PRA).

The group has organized an advocacy project that will provide free essential medicines to around 200 patients suffering from one of the most common arthritic conditions affecting Filipinos.

READ: Gout in young adults, explained

Called “Stop Gout,” the program will start “late this year or early next year,” the group said.

Patients referred by their rheumatologists will be enrolled in the program.

“If [they] have other medications they are taking, they don’t really need to sacrifice not buying these specific medicines, because their budgets are tight,” Dr. Emmanuel Perez, PRA’s past president, told reporters in a briefing in Pasig City last week.

Doctors would ensure that the enrolled patients would be able to take, at least once a day for a whole year, either allopurinol or febuxostat—generic names of the usual medicines that lower the uric acid level.

Painful swelling

Gout is caused by too much uric acid in the blood. When uric acid levels in the human blood are too high, the uric acid may form hard crystals in the joints, often around elbows, knees, or hands.

Patients with gout experience painful swelling in the affected joint—attacks that can happen frequently unless gout is treated. Over time, these gout attacks can harm a patient’s joints, tendons, and other tissues.

PRA said around 1.6 percent of the country’s population or around 1.8 million Filipinos, have gout.

People who are overweight, drink too much alcohol, or eat too much meat and fish high in chemicals called purines are at higher risk of gout.

Men are more likely to develop gout earlier, while women generally experience the onset of symptoms after menopause.

“The challenge with treating patients with gouty arthritis is to make sure we prevent them from progressing to the complicated aspect of that condition. Once the patients reach the chronic tophaceous gout phase, we now see kidney complications. That’s when we see repetitive consultations… and more frequent arthritis attacks,” Perez said.

“With this access to medicine project, they no longer need to worry about making gout their least priority, since we will make sure that their medicines are provided,” he said.