Migraine is a complex condition with a wide variety of symptoms. The main feature is a painful headache. Other symptoms include disturbed vision, sensitivity to light, sound and smells, feeling sick and vomiting. Symptoms vary from person to person and attacks may differ in length and frequency too, usually lasting from 4 to 72 hours.
It is one of the most disabling conditions in the world, affecting over 450,000 people in Wales and accounting for an estimated 43 million lost workdays per year UK-wide.
A new report, ‘Dismissed for too long’, by the UK’s leading migraine charity, The Migraine Trust, reveals the legacy of pain and damaged lives caused by the UK’s broken migraine healthcare system.
The report highlights how migraine is very common and has wide-ranging impacts on our population, but nonetheless has been underinvested in, is largely absent from NHS plans or local public health strategies, and that access to specialist care is patchy and inconsistent across the country. This includes a finding that only 17% of Welsh Local Health Boards had plans to increase specialist headache services, and that Wales has only 1.1 specialist headache doctors per 100,000 people (compared to 4 per 100,000 in France and Germany).
The report calls for action across the health service, with better training for all GPs on the latest treatments and interventions, access to specialist services for those who need it, and leadership from Local Health Boards to make sure local needs are being met.
The Migraine Trust’s range of proposals to be considered in order to improve the migraine treatment and care are as follows:
- Everyone visiting their GP for head pain should be assessed for migraine
- Making migraine treatment and care a core part of junior doctor and GP training
- Everyone diagnosed with migraine should receive an individualised care plan
- Health systems should review migraine needs, plan services to meet them, ensure adequate access to specialists and appoint a Migraine/Headache Lead
- Each UK nation’s government should support the recruitment of additional headache specialists and consultant neurologists, to bring us into line with the levels in other European countries like France and Germany
- Public awareness campaigns should be developed to improve understanding of the range of migraine symptoms, as well as to reduce the stigma associated with migraine
This new work by The Migraine Trust shows we badly need investment in training and specialist services, to lift the burden migraine places on people and our NHS.
Acting to improve migraine care will improve quality of life for millions of people, and will also reduce work days lost to illness and relieve pressure on A&E departments. Better care could save many more of the 43 million work days that are lost to migraine in the UK each year, and avoid most of the 16,500 emergency admissions for headaches and migraine attacks if we simply give people better care. Change is urgently needed.