Ostomy Awareness Day

There are many awareness days and programs in place for helping to highlight the struggles of those living with chronic conditions, educate people on the realities of living with such conditions, and provide support for sufferers. These awareness days range from mental health awareness to cancer and rare disease awareness. 

One important awareness day that is coming up is Ostomy Awareness Day, taking place on October 7th 2023. Read on for everything you need to know about Ostomy Awareness Day and what you can do to get involved.

What is Ostomy Awareness Day?

Ostomy Awareness Day is a yearly event designed to bring awareness to the day-to-day realities that living with a stoma entails and to offer education and guidance on how to support ostomates in your life.

It is estimated that 1 in 335 in the UK are currently living with a stoma. The experience of living with a stoma can be difficult, painful, and isolating, making days like Ostomy Awareness Day crucial for raising awareness and offering support to those struggling with stoma-related conditions.

When is Ostomy Awareness Day?

Ostomy Awareness Day happens on the first Saturday of October every year. This year, Ostomy Awareness Day will be taking place on Saturday, October 7th 2023.

What is this year’s theme?

While Ostomy Awareness Day is designed to raise awareness for ostomates and the difficulties they experience in the course of ordinary life, this year Colostomy UK has come up with a specific theme for the event. Confusingly, Colostomy UK calls the day, “Stoma Aware Day,” so keep an eye out for that difference.

Ostomy Awareness Day 2023 will be focusing on the theme “Smash Social Exclusion.” Many ostomates feel excluded from daily life, finding social situations difficult to handle due to their condition. In fact, according to studies:

• 62% of ostomates feel their lives are directly impacted by a lack of suitable toilet facilities in public
• 22% report that lack of awareness about stomas and the challenges they pose on a day-to-day basis impacts their lives
• 4% of ostomates do not leave their homes due to their condition

Through campaigns like Ostomy Awareness Day/Stoma Aware Day, we can help to raise awareness for the difficulties faced by ostomates, remove the stigma around stomas, and help ostomates to their lives to the fullest without having to worry about their condition or how they might be perceived by others. 

Increased awareness and education will lead to better public facilities being put in place, greater understanding of the challenges ostomates face, and potentially more rapid advancements in medical technology in the area.

So, how can you get involved?

There are plenty of ways you can get involved with Ostomy Awareness Day 2023. You can show your support for the campaign on social media by sharing the hashtags #StomaAware, #OstomateVoices, and #OAD2023.

The Colostomy UK website also has loads of great resources that you can download and share to help raise awareness for the campaign. These include:

• The Stoma Aware poster
• A stoma selfie poster
• Patient stories about how social exclusion has affected their lives as ostomates

Here at Medicareplus, we’ll be sharing information, resources, and insights about everything to do with life as an ostomate on our socials all month. Give our Instagram and LinkedIn a follow and join in the conversation this Ostomy Awareness Day!

We also have a collection of resources over on our Patient Portal, so make sure to check those out for even more information about stomas and wound care.