ALS Day, Rafanelli (AISLA): “Networking is essential”

“Lighting up hundreds of monuments and municipalities in green throughout Italy is a very strong message and perhaps never before has there been such a great mobilization. We have reached very high levels. It is important to continue to raise public awareness of a disease that still has no cure today”. So Davide Rafanelli, national councilor of Aisla, National Association of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and president of Slafoodintervening on the initiative promoted on the occasion of the National ALS Day, organized by Aisla, on September 14 and 15. “Networking is essential to dialogue and to be able to support both research and patients and, above all, the families of ALS patients. In these days there have been so many demonstrations of affection, from North to South, demonstrating that the national day, for Aisla, is something very important where we patients also feel at the center of a life project and we realize that all together we can, probably, change the history of this disease. We believe in it”.

In this regard, referring to the lighting of the Belvedere of Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, the national councilor of Aisla, Maurizio Colombo, underlined that “the gesture takes on a character of extraordinary strength for being able to communicate both what we are doing as an association and for the sensitivity that the institutions demonstrate towards us”. Moreover, “there are 290 municipalities that have joined our initiative and among the symbolic places there is certainly Palazzo Chigi in Rome that has truly honored us by ‘painting itself’ in green for our initiative”.

As Federica Cerri, neurologist in charge of the ALS area at the Nemo clinical center in Milan and doctor on the Aisl scientific commission, recalled, “all the interlocutors who are essential for the management of a complex pathology such as ALS. Palazzo Lombardia has opened its doors. We welcome with great enthusiasm this participation of the Region to reiterate the importance that our patients have. As a clinical neurologist researcher I will never stop saying – she concludes – that it is a battle that we all fight together and the national ALS day is absolutely an example”.