by Aida PANIKYAN
Broadcasted by Information AGENCY “BALKAN”
on May 27, 2002 and published in the medical newspaper "Osteoporosis"
on June 2002.
This article is based on the necessity of prevention of the osteoporosis
until the age of 20. In Bulgaria many young people are recently registered
with low bone density. They are potential invalids. The difficult economical
situation in the country, the attitude of the society towards the invalids
and the unwillingness of the employers to hire invalids make this social
group isolated. In some doctors’ opinion, the medical cost of hip fracture
caused by osteoporosis, is about 50 thousands of leva, which is very expensive.
Because there are not fixed data about the injured and suffering from
osteoporosis in Bulgaria, the information used is taken from USA and
the EU countries. 
It is also mentioned the doctors’ stand-point about the negligence
of the Bulgarian people towards the osteoporosis, which is caused mainly
because the lack of knowledge about the disease and that it does not
have visible symptoms. According to a study done by the University Hospital
of Endocrinology in Sofia, only 0.3 percent of the Bulgarian women practice
sports, 7 percent do fitness and about a half of them smoke. 1/5 from
the children over the age of 5 have lasting physical problems and young
people aged 15-24 smoke. The basic reason about the worsen health condition of the Bulgarian nation, is the decreased life-quality and the lack of funds. The high human cost of the disease affects the quality of life. For the Bulgarians this is a serious problem in the difficult economical situation. Moreover that the health-care reform in the country is its beginning. For all that lot of people want to know more about osteoporosis and its prevention – they listen lectures, read newspapers. The risk from osteoporosis is higher for children and young people because of their bad nutrition (the consume of food rich of calcium and proteins is not enough) and the reduced sport activities. The efforts of the Ministry of the Education should be mainly focused on attracting children to sport activities, because they are not interested in attending the sport classes. This is in that way because the material base is in bad condition and the educational programs are very old. The good news is that at this moment the National Agency for Youth and Sport works over a national project which includes more sport activities for the Bulgarians from all age groups. At this moment, for the prevention of the osteoporosis work mainly doctors, medicine teams - “Bulgarian League for Prevention of Osteoporosis”, NGO-s (the Association “Women Without Osteoporosis”) together with the “National Center of Hygiene, Medical Ecology and Nutrition” and the regional Hygiene-epidemiological inspectorates, companies working in pharmacology, which produce and trade with drugs for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis - “Eli Lilly and Company and Subsidiaries” (as a producer of “Evista”), and some others, which provide different project between children, teenagers and risk groups and give information about the osteoporosis’ epidemic. Recently the Ministry of Health Care started to work over a National program for prevention and treatment of osteoporosis in Bulgaria.
