Arthritis sufferers’ agonising four-year wait for specialists

IRISH women have joined the one million women in Europe who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis (RA) to demand urgent action on the poor services available for the incurable disease.

A chronic disease that causes the immune system to attack the joints, women are three to five times more likely to suffer from RA than men.

Sixty per cent of RA patients, meanwhile, are unable to work within ten years of the disease’s onset.