The National Board of Health and Welfare has been criticized by the patient association for covid disease because the national knowledge support on how long-term illness should be treated is delayed.

Agenda has therefore invited 

Thomas Lindén, head of the National Board of Health and Welfare's department for knowledge management for health and medical care

.

The studio also has 

Ylva Sandström, chairman of the Stockholm District Medical Association

, who can describe the difficulties for general practitioners at health centers in treating long-term patients, and what support they want.

Another issue we address is whether Sweden needs to build more specialist clinics to take care of those who are ill more than three months after they have been infected with covid, or whether GPs with the support of existing hospital care can investigate the new disease.

Today, there are specialist clinics for long-term covid only in Stockholm and in Norrköping.

Here, too, the National Board of Health and Welfare's opinion weighs heavily when Sweden's regions have to make decisions about the form of care.

We have also invited the

chief physician and associate professor of infectious diseases Judith Bruchfeld's

to start the ward for long-term illness at Karolinska Hospital to tell her about how the care for long-term covid patients has changed after their business started.

In a pre-recorded interview with 

Professor Graham Burns

 from Newcastle in the UK, he talks about the work in the clinic for long-term patients that he started this spring, and how great the need is for the care they offer.

The health authority NHS has decided to investigate many long-term patients in special clinics and so far 72 have opened in England.

Of importance for the need for care is the view of the disease.

How many have residual symptoms that do not heal on their own?

Is there a risk that patients who are ill for other reasons are incorrectly treated as if they had long-term covid?

We ask the questions to the researcher Judith Bruchfeld and the National Board of Health and Welfare's Thomas Lindén, who is responsible for compiling the research on the new disease.