A shortage of blood and stem cells in the black community is costing lives, Canada's blood agency warns.
Canadian Blood Services is calling on people of African and Caribbean heritage to register as blood and stem donors through its OneMatch Stem Cell and Marrow Network.
Sickle cell disease is an inherited disease of red blood cells, predominantly affecting people of African descent. In people with sickle cell disease, the red blood cells are abnormally shaped and starve tissues of oxygen.
The lifespan of affected people is about three decades shorter than average, said Dr. Isaac Odame, medical director of the Global Sickle Cell Disease Network at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
Complications can include infections, extreme bone pain and damage to the brain, lungs, heart and kidneys, Odame said.
Kynan Jackson, 7, of Halifax struggles with painful sickle cell disease. He takes medication twice a day, has had blood transfusions and been admitted to the hospital a few times since he was diagnosed at age four.
"It is stressful," said his mother, Winnell Jackson. "It's almost like a waiting game. The medication won't ever stop him from getting crisis again, so I know it's coming."
A stem cell transplant replaces the bad, misshapen ones with normal ones, said Odame.
Sickle cell disease can be cured with stem cell transplants, says Dr. Issac Odame. (CBC)
"The only way to give him [Kynan] a chance is to cure it," Odame said. "We know that it can be cured through stem cell transplantation."
Stem cell transplants require a close match from a donor of the same ethnic background, which narrows Kynan's odds of getting one.
"If you are Caucasian and you're looking for an unrelated match, probably 75 per cent chance you will find one. If you are of African descent, your odds are far, far, far less," Odame said.
Canada's blacks represent about 2.5 per cent of the population, based on the 2006 census. But of the 300,000 on the blood agency's stem cell and marrow registry, only 0.7 per cent are of African descent.
"Sometimes people wait six months to years to find a match and they may end up passing away in that time period because we can't find a match in Canada or around the world," said Sue Smith, executive director of One Match.
During Black History Month, Canadian Blood Services is appealing for young, black male donors in particular to donate blood and be registered. Men tend to be bigger and deliver a larger volume of stem cells without the complications of an over-reactive immune system that can occur during pregnancy.
Currently, the agency said there is a waiting list of 36 African Canadians with cancer who could be cured with a stem cell transplant. Kynan's mom hopes the campaign is a success and she's able to see him grow up.
It would "be really nice to know that, you know what, he does have a match out there. There's somebody out there wherever they may be, that would match him and be able to take that pain, help ease that pain in his life."
The blood agency's theme this year, "Our Canadian Story: Making Community Engagement a Priority," emphasizes community
Plea is aimed at battling sickle cell disease
CBC News Posted: Feb 4, 2012 10:44 AM ET
http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2012/02/03/blood-stem-cells-black-history.html
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Where are the doctors?
Where are the doctors?
By Sarah Kliff, Published: December 2 | Updated: Saturday, December 3, 10:00 AM
In health reform, there’s a lot of talk about an impending “doctor shortage,” where we’ll have too few physicians to treat a population that’s getting increasingly older and sicker. By 2020, we’ll have 90,000 fewer doctors than we need, according to projections from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
That big number, however, masks a lot of geographic variation. Some states are hugely lacking in doctors; others have many physicians. A few maps released Friday, also by AAMC, probe the geography of our impending doctor shortage and what makes particular states more susceptible than others.
First, let’s start with where the doctors are. Northeastern states have the highest concentration of doctors, while Southern states, as well as those in the West, have some of the lowest. It’s a pretty striking disparity. Massachusetts, for example, has twice as many doctors per capita as Mississippi:
Why do doctors practice where they do? Some of the reasons that particular states have more doctors than others are easy: Rural areas have traditionally had trouble attracting physicians, and doctors tend to stay where they train. AAMC finds in this study that about two-thirds of doctors stay in a state where they did at least part of their medical education.
But that doesn’t really explain what’s going on in this map. Texas, for example, is home to two of the country’s largest cities, Dallas and Houston. It graduated more than 1,200 medical students last year, second only to New York. About 80 percent of doctors who train in Texas stay in Texas. Yet it has one of the lowest levels of doctors seen in the country.
Compare that to Maine, a state without a medical school that somehow manages to have one of the highest levels of physicians.
What drives doctors out of one state and into another is actually pretty difficult to figure out. The map of physicians doesn’t line up nicely with one showing a state’s average income or its population size. Rates of uninsurance or aggressive tort reform laws don’t really predict much, either. States with fewer doctors tend to be more rural, but there are certainly exceptions: Nevada has an exceptionally low rate of doctors despite 91 percent of its population living in urban areas, according to census data.
One factor that the AAMC report points to is the percentage of international medical graduates. Nearly all the states with higher rates of doctors also show a larger percentage of their physician workforce educated outside the United States. Aside from that, though, why doctors practice where they do remains difficult to decipher.
© The Washington Post Company
Friday, November 4, 2011
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Conditioning of our Youth
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Mini-medical schools helping people age in better health
This is a very good story about the teaching others to tend for themselves.... Self-empowerment
This story is taken from Sacbee / Medical News
Mini-medical schools helping people age in better health
acreamer@sacbee.com
PUBLISHED TUESDAY, OCT. 18, 2011
Dr. Michael McCloud started off thinking small. He expected only a handful of people to show up in early 2002 for what he thought would be a one-time series of classes on healthy aging, his spin on the growing "mini-medical school" concept.
In general, mini-medical schools – a public outreach program with a catchy name – provide classroom sessions on the health sciences for laypeople. Universities across the country have used them primarily to showcase their institutional research.
McCloud, a UC Davis Medical Center geriatrician, liked the mini-medical school idea, but wanted to finesse it for older adults. Classes would be free, taught by medical school faculty members. At the end of the series, participants would receive diplomas.
He just hoped enough people would sign up for classes on aging that he could fill the 150-seat Maidu Community Center meeting room in Roseville.
"We put some posters up around the retirement communities in Roseville and Rocklin, and within two weeks, more than 200 people enrolled," McCloud said.
In all, 510 people attended his first mini-medical school – and over the past decade, more than 3,500 Sacramento region residents, ranging in age from 23 to 92 and including more than a few people interested in careers related to gerontology, have graduated.
"I have no idea why this has struck a chord," McCloud said. "It's a surprise it's still going strong. I thought it was a one-time event."
With the 10th anniversary season approaching of what's become "Aging and Medical Science: A Mini Medical School to Prepare for Life's Second Half," the program teaches its students what normal aging is and how to deal with a range of older-age medical problems – and it emboldens them to speak up to their own physicians. Enrollment for the six-class 2012 session, which takes place on the main UC Davis campus, begins Nov. 1.
According to the National Institutes of Health, more than 70 universities in 34 states and three countries – including Malta – are now home to mini-medical schools. Nationally, the UC Davis program is one of the few that specializes in the medical aspects of growing older.
Stanford University's mini-medical program this fall covers human biology. The current Georgetown University sessions deal with general medicine, including gross anatomy and hypertension. At the University of Iowa, participants are learning about cutting-edge medical research.
Some critics dismiss the mini-medical school concept, born in 1989 at the University of Colorado, as merely a public relations tool for medical school faculty members. But at medical schools across the country, enrollment has soared, with sessions filling up rapidly.
Fred Harrold, an 85-year-old retired car dealer, thinks he knows why the UC Davis Mini Medical School program is so popular.
"The value for older people is, you read all of these ads for this pill and that pill," said Harrold, who enrolled in the classes three years ago. "Maybe a lot of things seem obvious to the educated person. But the doctors straighten you out on what to watch out for.
"The classes don't seem dumbed down too much for the students. And the message isn't as simplistic as, 'Eat your vegetables and you'll be healthy.' "
Besides, a rapidly aging population is eager to learn what to expect as it grows older: what can be prevented and what might go wrong along the way.
McCloud changes the curriculum each year – the 2012 session will include classes on digestive health after age 50 and the science of sleep – and, if donor support allows it, he wants to expand his mini-medical program to twice-yearly sessions that can dig deeper into issues such as medical ethics as well as aging and sexuality.
"We actually promote our mini-medical school more to the pre-senior, because there's more opportunity for us to make a difference for them," said McCloud. "If we can teach these principles to somebody who's 50, we can make sure they arrive healthy at the senior age group."
Two years ago, the National Institute on Aging drew from the UC Davis curriculum in creating its own mini-medical school series on healthy aging, geared toward its ongoing "Aging Under the Microscope" program.
Now a geriatrician from Singapore plans to be on hand for the 2012 local program, to take what she learns back to Asia.
"One of my goals is to give value to the mini-medical school diploma, so that health insurance will give special rates to people who've received one," said McCloud. "It would be just like the reduced car insurance rates for people who take senior safe-driving classes."
© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.
Monday, October 24, 2011
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