Category Archives: ALC Health News

Elastic implant ‘reverses paralysis’

An elastic implant that moves with the spinal cord can restore the ability to walk in paralysed rats, say scientists.

Implants are an exciting field of research in spinal cord injury, but rigid designs damage surrounding tissue and ultimately fail.

A team at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has developed flexible implants that work for months.

It was described by experts as a “groundbreaking achievement of technology”.

The spinal cord is like a motorway with electrical signals rushing up and down it instead of cars.

Injury to the spinal cord leads to paralysis when the electrical signals are stuck in a jam and can no longer get from the brain to the legs.

SOURCE BBC News

Vaccines move to Ebola frontline

Two promising Ebola vaccines will soon be tried on the frontline of the epidemic in West Africa, the World Health Organization has announced.

Trials in limited numbers of volunteers suggest the vaccines are safe and can generate an immune response.

Further trials on thousands of people will take place in Africa, including in healthcare workers.

It is still unclear how much protection against Ebola, or for how long, the vaccines might provide.

The two leading candidates – being produced by GlaxoSmithKline and Merck – are going through safety trials in the US, UK and other countries.

The WHO said they had “an acceptable safety profile” and they were ready to be tested on the frontline.

“The world is waiting for us to get Ebola vaccines ready and out to the people that need them in their communities,” said Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, assistant director general of the WHO.

SOURCE BBC News

New Ebola vaccine trial begins

Scientists at Oxford University have begun immunising healthy volunteers with a new Ebola vaccine.

In September last year a separate trial of another Ebola vaccine got under way in the city.

This latest trial involves 72 volunteers aged 18-50.

Initial tests in monkeys showed the vaccine, developed by Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson and Johnson, gave complete protection against Ebola.

The volunteers in Oxford are the first humans to receive the vaccine.

SOURCE | BBC News

Most cancer types just bad luck

Most types of cancer can be put down to bad luck rather than risk factors such as smoking, a study has suggested.

A US team were trying to explain why some tissues were millions of times more vulnerable to cancer than others.

The results, in the journal Science, showed two thirds of the cancer types analysed were caused just by chance mutations rather than lifestyle.

However some of the most common and deadly cancers are still heavily influenced by lifestyle.

And Cancer Research UK said a healthy lifestyle would still heavily stack the odds in a person’s favour.

SOURCE : BBC News

Experimental drug for UK Ebola nurse

Ebola patient Pauline Cafferkey is receiving an experimental anti-viral drug and blood from survivors of the disease, doctors in London have said.

Specialists at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, where the nurse is being treated, did not name the drug.

Dr Michael Jacobs said Ms Cafferkey was in isolation and was sitting up in bed, talking and reading.

As the disease has no known cure and is unpredictable, Dr Jacobs said they would know more in a week’s time.

He said Ms Cafferkey had agreed to all the treatments and her family had been to see her.

SOURCE BBC World

ALC Health CEO awarded MBE in New Year Honours List

imageSarah Jewell, founder and Chief Executive Officer of International Medical Insurance provider ALC Health has been awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in The Queen’s New Year Honours list in recognition of her services to entrepreneurship in the Medical Health Industry.

Ms. Jewell commented. “This was an unexpected but a great honour. Having been involved in the medical insurance industry for over 20 years, I have been privileged to meet and work with some quite amazing people whose support and guidance has played a great part in the success that I have enjoyed”.

For further press information contact Andrew Apps at andrew.apps@alchealth.com or telephone +44 (0)1903 817970

Universal health coverage – Ebola reveals the gaps

West Africa’s Ebola epidemic has cruelly exposed the weaknesses of health systems in the countries where it struck. It was understandable that they were not prepared for Ebola, which has never been reported in the region before, but the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan, says what they lacked was a robust public health infrastructure to deal with the unexpected.

“This requires good background data on the usual,” she says, “so that the unusual stands out. [It means] making good quality care accessible and affordable to everyone, and not just to wealthy people living in urban areas; having enough facilities available in the right places with enough well trained staff and uninterrupted supplies of essential medicines; diagnostic capacity that returns rapid and reliable results; and information systems that pinpoint gaps and direct strategies and resources towards unmet needs.”

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SOURCE : IRIN

New Ebola test approved

A new Ebola test named LightMix Ebola Zaire rRT-PCR, made by the company Roche, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and can generate results in three hours. The current test called RT-PCR, which stands for reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, takes six hours. LightMix testing has not been approved for general use yet.
SOURCE : Healix International