More money is needed for research into lung covid. Researchers with rare knowledge about lung covid are switching to other projects because the Ministry of Health does not allocate money for their salaries. And that is a problem, because in Brabant alone at least 4000 people have long-term complaints after corona. “And those are just the people who have reported. There are probably many more.”
It is three years ago on Monday that the then Minister of Health, Bruno Bruins, received the infamous note. It stated that the first patient with corona had been detected in the Netherlands.
Three years later, the pandemic seems to be over, but in the meantime tens of thousands of Dutch people are still struggling with lung covid. They have been struggling for months with fatigue, concentration problems, memory problems, headaches and shortness of breath. As a result, the patients cannot work and are dependent on benefits. Researchers expect this to have major economic and social consequences.
“People are pining for a panacea, but it can only come with more research.”
Over the past year, the Ministry of Health has made money available for research to discover why and in whom lung covid occurs. The research is mainly carried out by universities and university hospitals and they depend on subsidies from the ministry. According to lung covid researcher at Maastricht UMC, Chahinda Ghossein, this money has mainly gone to arranging access to patient data. As a result, little money was left for the research itself.
So the research is far from over. But the need is great, because according to C-Support, a foundation that conducts research into lung covid on behalf of the ministry, the number of people with the condition is increasing by 800 to 1000 every month.
Annemieke de Groot, director of C-Support, sees people struggling for months with complaints. “We do not yet have a good picture of the causes of lung covid and a medicine is not yet in sight,” she says. “These people yearn for a panacea, but that can only come through research.”
“More money alone is not the solution, researchers need to work together better.”
Minister Kuipers indicated that he first wants to know what kind of research is already being done abroad. In doing so, he hopes to prevent Dutch researchers from reinventing the wheel. In the meantime, researchers have to bridge a period without money. As a result, the mainly young researchers who have a great deal of expertise in this area will conduct other studies with greater certainty.
Annemieke de Groot of C-Support understands that somehow: “The research is of great social importance, but I also understand that researchers need to get bread on the shelf.”
According to De Groot, however, it is not just a matter of money. “It is also about better organizing research,” she says.
“We first need to get a good idea of what other countries are already researching and what exactly we need. Too often researchers are alone on an island and they don’t know how to find each other.” As a result, she says a lot of duplication of work is done. “If researchers would join forces worldwide, we would go a lot further.”