Activities Report / InformationREPORT & INFORMATION
2025.05.07
Activity report
- #Rare disease
- #Rare disease day
- #Disease awareness
"Rare Disease Week 2025" disease awareness event held for employees
About Rare Disease Day and Rare Disease Week
Rare Disease Day is an international awareness initiative that began in Sweden in 2008, aiming to improve the quality of life for patients with rare and intractable diseases through better diagnosis and treatment. RDD events have been held nationwide since 2010 to provide opportunities for patients, their families, and others to connect with each other in Japan as well.
Approximately 350 million patients in the world suffer from 5,000-8,000 different types of rare diseases. However, due to the small number of patients with each disease, patients and their families face many challenges when fighting against the disease, such as the struggle to find adequate information the patients may wait several years for a correct diagnosis, the lack of specialized doctors and researchers, and the difficulty in developing therapeutic medications and treatments.
The MEDIPAL Group conducted various initiatives aimed at providing "opportunities for more employees to learn about rare diseases and empathize with patients" on Rare Disease Day on February 28.
As one of these activities, we held "Rare Disease Week 2025" as a disease awareness event for employees from February 25 to 28, 2025.
Event Activities
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Projection of Rare Disease Information
Information about rare and intractable diseases was displayed on digital signage at the Tokyo head office entrance and throughout office floors.
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Panel Exhibition
To deepen employees' understanding of rare and intractable diseases, we exhibited information about the circumstances surrounding patients and their families, as well as information about rare diseases.
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Portal Site
A special portal site was set up to introduce basic knowledge about rare and intractable diseases and the problems that rare disease patients face along their journey.
During the event, we also set up participatory quizzes designed to provide employees with an engaging way to learn about rare diseases, which garnered high employee interest.
Part of the comments from our employees are as follows
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Deepened Knowledge and Understanding of Rare Diseases:
- "I learned that rare diseases often have low awareness among medical professionals and researchers, making it difficult to develop treatments. I also realized that reaching a definitive diagnosis takes lots of time, medical costs and hospital visits create significant burdens, and patients and their families sometimes feel isolated and struggle with daily life due to lack of understanding from others."
- "I learned that there are rare diseases not registered as designated intractable diseases in Japan, and patients not only suffer from various physical symptoms but also face psychological and economic difficulties. The event has inspired me to hope that patients and their families will be able to find peace and comfort sooner rather than later."
- "I truly realized that there are people worldwide suffering from unknown diseases for which research and development of treatments and diagnostic methods have hardly progressed."
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Significance and Sense of Mission in Our Work:
- "Participating in this event made me realize that I felt strongly that we must continue to contribute as pharmaceutical wholesalers to patients suffering from rare diseases."
- "As my own work involves early detection of pediatric rare diseases, my desire to contribute has deepened."
We would like to continue to engage in awareness activities to deepen our understanding of rare diseases, aiming to contribute to improving the quality of life for patients and their families.
