This Anosmia Awareness Day, Thursday 27th February, we’re partnering with Fifth Sense, the charity for people affected by smell and taste disorders, to raise awareness of smell impairment.
Anosmia, the inability to detect smells, is one such condition. It can be acquired through head injuries, illnesses such as colds, flu or COVID-19, medication or treatments, conditions such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, and lots more. It can also be congenital where people are born without a sense of smell.
Other smell conditions include parosmia, where someone’s smell is distorted and things smell horrible, and phantosmia where people detect smells in the absence of a stimulus.
It’s estimated that as many as 5% of people in the UK are living with anosmia and as much as 22% of the general adult population have some degree of olfactory dysfunction, yet there are very few treatments, not enough research into the causes, and a lack of knowledge amongst health and social care professionals.
Please join us in supporting #AnosmiaAwarenessDay to help transform society’s understanding of these under-recognised sensory impairments. It’s time to give our senses of smell and taste the attention they deserve.
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