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Among the items in Ohio's newly passed state budget is a requirement that the Ohio Department of Health "establish and maintain a Parkinson's disease registry for the collection and monitoring of the incidence of Parkinson's disease in Ohio." They've got two years to do it, but judging by concerns about the scant information available on the subject, it sounds as though officials should lose no time getting the ball rolling.
"There's really no clear cut and dry number that says there's X number of people in Northeast Ohio that suffer from Parkinson's Disease," Cathe Schwartz, CEO of nonprofit InMotion, which helps people manage Parkinson's disease, told News 5 Cleveland. "If you can't count, if you can't measure the number of people out there with Parkinson's, it's really difficult to figure out what our next steps should be in terms of a cure, in terms of looking at causes, and in terms of helping people live with this disease."
While there is a guess that there are nearly 30,000 Buckeye State residents living with Parkinson's disease, data about where those patients live is hard to come by.
"It's not uniform across the country or regions," Fred Discenzo, vice president of the Ohio Parkinson's Foundation Northeast Region, told News 5 Cleveland. "There are pockets of increasing incidents and we don't know why. It's rapidly increasing across the country and worldwide and now Ohio is one of the leaders taking a look at what might be causing this and what are some regions or environmental factors causing this increase."
Such information could prove vital as the search for ways to prevent and even cure Parkinson's continues. Lawmakers are to be commended for including the requirement. Now it's time for ODH to get to work.