Monthly Archives: May 2014

NHS patients to get new MS drug

May 28, 2014   Carers, Featured Article, Multiple Sclerosis
  • Treatment not only stops the disease from advancing but may help patients recover from disability
  • Scientists have spent 25 years developing treatment at Cambridge
  • Alemtuzumab infusion is given in two short courses over two years
  • Despite costing £56,000, NICE has ruled treatment is cost-effective

By Jenny Hope

Published: 01:16, 28 May 2014 | Updated: 13:13, 28 May 2014

 

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 Landmark discovery: The brain of someone with MS, which can leave sufferers unable to walk – but new treatment could reverse the effects of the disease

A new treatment for Multiple Sclerosis not only stops the disease from advancing but may help patients recover from disability.

Remarkable results for the drug alemtuzumab mean it has been approved for use on the NHS and is now available in England.

Originally a pioneering cancer therapy, Cambridge University scientists have spent almost 25 years developing it as a treatment for MS sufferers.

Trials involving more than 1,500 patients show treatment led to fewer relapses compared with multiple jabs of the treatment beta interferon each week, cutting further disability and even allowing some existing damage to recover.

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Loneliness is not a bug with a technological solution

May 28, 2014   Carers, disability, Featured Article, internet, Social care
Helping elderly people to use the internet is a good idea. But let’s not mistake broadband connections for social ones

Shar

‘Anyone who has spent time with elderly people knows the real issues are much more complex.’

In the UK, four out of 10 over-65s do not have internet access. At a time when so much of our lives is conducted online – the payment of bills, access to information – that should be a real source of concern about potential social exclusion.

But does this mean that by widening internet access, elderly people will feel more socially connected? Or, even, more radically, as a new report suggests, could this be a solution for loneliness in old age?

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UKIP and Carers – the 10%

May 27, 2014   Carers, disability, Featured Article

So 1 in 10 Brits voted UKIP last week? 

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Seems like the media can’t stop drivelling on about it. And people can’t stop drivelling about the media coverage.

Yet – amidst all the tumult and the shouting – here is one fact the media have missed reporting . As they have, consistently, for years and years and years.

There’s another one in 10 people in the UK who nobody mentions – the one in 10 who are unpaid family carers. On  duty – responsible for someone’s life –  many for the full 168 hours a week, week in, week out.  It is quite as dreadful as it sounds. You have difficulty with everything: working, sleeping, socialising, existing.  Paying bills. Getting out.  You don’t tend to get luxuries like bank holidays. And, no, you don’t get used to it.

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