By Deron Hamel

Representatives from community epilepsy agencies across Ontario will be gathering at Queen’s Park on Oct. 27 to meet with MPPs to underscore the importance of controlling seizures for everyone in the province living with epilepsy.

Epilepsy Action Day is an annual event where the representatives convene at the Ontario legislature to mobilize their efforts into several meetings with MPPs and policy makers to provide them with a better understanding of the challenges people living with seizure disorders face and to offer solutions to minimize epilepsy’s impact.

Each Epilepsy Action Day has a different theme but the goal is always the same: educate government officials about the challenges Ontarians living with epilepsy face and encourage them to take action to create policies that improve quality of life for the almost one in 100 people affected by the condition.

This year’s Epilepsy Action Day has three main objectives, says Paul Raymond, Epilepsy Ontario’s executive director.

Firstly, agencies are looking for MPPs to support their advocacy efforts to help make the most effective seizure control available to every person in Ontario living with epilepsy. This is the No. 1 objective for agencies at this year’s event, Raymond says.

“We need the Ontario Government’s support to enable individuals with epilepsy to gain greater seizure control, whether it’s access to the best medication, or surgery, or the ketogenic diet, or local support services through agencies,” he says.

Secondly, the agencies want support to ensure adequate funding is available for the next stage of the provincial epilepsy strategy.

The third objective is to encourage MPPs to support advocacy efforts for students with epilepsy in Ontario schools, which was the main theme behind last year’s Action Day.

“The best long-term outcome would be to have additional funds made available so that the epilepsy strategy for Ontario moves into the implementation stage,” Raymond tells Voices of Epilepsy.

“The strategy will help people achieve greater seizure control through it’s recommendations. We need the government’s support to make sure those recommendations get into the hands of the people who will implement them.”

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