Ms Imelda Farmer, who spoke about the patient's experience at yesterday's launch in Brussels, is a hairdresser from Dublin who had to give up her job as a result of osteoporosis.
When she was in her early 30s, she collapsed with severe back pain while on holiday. Six months previously she had been prescribed steroids for an unrelated condition.
Following her return home, Ms Farmer was diagnosed with osteoporosis which had caused several of her vertebrae to collapse. As a direct result of these compression fractures, her height has gone from 5 foot 3 inches to 4 foot 8 inches - a loss of 7 inches.
As well as a financial loss caused by having to give up her hairdressing business, she has had to move to bungalow accommodation. She suffers with "very, very bad back pain" and says that "everything creaks, especially my shoulders and arms". She told The Irish Times she was motivated to come to Brussels to highlight the problem of osteoporosis. Emphasising that thinning of the bones is not just an older persons disease she said: "I want to prevent it happening to others".