Tag: 2/9/22

Categories : HospitalsTags :

Operation Dudula Harasses Immigrants outside Kalafong Hospital

On By ModernMedia
Police were present at Kalafong Hospital in Tshwane on Wednesday after the Gauteng Health Department obtained an interdict to prevent members of Operation Dudula from threatening immigrants. Photo: Mosima Rafapa

Members of Operation Dudula were outside Kalafong provincial hospital in Tshwane on Wednesday, shouting at immigrant patients and employees. Police were present, enforcing the court interdict obtained last week by the Gauteng Health Department against the threats.

A security guard who did not want to give his name said for most of August Operation Dudula members had been operating outside the hospital, until the Gauteng Department of Health obtained a court interdict last Friday.

“They greeted patients who were of a dark skin colour one by one, to check which language they spoke and to listen to their accent. The local language here is Tswana or Pedi. If they found that you don’t know those languages, they turned you away,” said the security officer, whose station is not far from the pedestrian entrance.

Since 4 August, Operation Dudula has been trying to deny access to patients and employees from other countries.

“I’m here at 5:30 in the morning. Just before 8am this morning, a member of Operation Dudula was speaking through a loudspeaker saying they don’t want makwerekwere. On Monday, they checked their ID documents before people could enter the hospital. Today, they were about five or six of them outside. I think they wanted to scare people away because they just stood there until the police arrived,” he added.

Last Friday, the Gauteng MEC for Health obtained a court interdict against the members from threatening or denying access to patients and employees. The interdict was pinned to the notice board outside the hospital.

When GroundUp arrived just after 10am, a handful of Operation Dudula members were still gathered outside. Some were shouting that foreigners should leave.

Chairperson of Operation Dudula in Atteridgeville and regional coordinator in Greater Tshwane Elias Makgwadi said they were picketing outside the hospital entrance to get management to enforce the hospital’s admission rules and not admit “illegal foreign nationals”.

“We are saying, enforce your own rules. If illegal foreign nationals have been admitted to hospitals they must be discharged to law enforcement officers and immigration officers. That’s why we’re here, ” said Makgwadi.

Members of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) put up a tent outside the hospital entrance and started chanting songs. Provincial spokesperson Phillip Makwala told the crowd: “Operation Dudula is acting as doctors, they are interfering with the process of the South African Police Service and the immigration office.”

Police officers were stationed outside the hospital.

Verrah Frace, from Zomba in Malawi, condemned the xenophobia. She works as a domestic worker in Laudium, west of Pretoria. Frace, who had come to visit her sick sister, said it was painful to see what Operation Dudula was doing.

“I came to South Africa in 2019 to look for a job because we are very poor back in Malawi. We are in South Africa to earn a living,” said Frace.

GroundUp heard a hospital employee wearing a pharmacy tag praising the Operation Dudula members. “These people get our medicine for free. They get everything for free. You guys are helping us. You are doing a great job,” said the employee before going back inside the hospital.

James Chasiya, from Magochi in Malawi, was at the hospital to see his wife who had given birth to a premature baby. He arrived in South Africa in 2014 and works as a plumber, living in one room in Laudium with his wife.

“Sometimes the piece jobs are hard to come by so I sell some of the furniture I have in order to pay rent. It’s not as easy living here as people think. We struggle. My wife works at a creche but it’s still hard. I’m undocumented so I can’t find a real job. There’s no way I can pay for a private hospital,” said Chasiya.

Head of Communication for the Gauteng Department of Health Motalatale Modiba had not responded to GroundUp’s questions by the time of publication.

The health department’s Motalatale Modiba said that the facility reported that operations are continuing as normal with no change in the number of patients.

“There is now increased police monitoring the situation. Patients are no longer obstructed from coming into the facility. The Department would like to assure patients that the hospital continues to render services to all who need such care,” he said.

Modiba said the department will not hesitate “to call law enforcement agencies to act against those that put the lives of patients and staff at risk”. He said the Department obtained a court interdict on 26 August from the High Court in Pretoria “to prevent a group of people from threatening, preventing and denying patients (deemed to be non-South African) and employees at Kalafong Hospital from accessing the facility to receive medical attention and to administer care respectively”.

Written by Mosima Rafapa

Republished from GroundUp under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Source: GroundUp

Categories : Medical Research & Technology Metabolic DisordersTags :

Breakthrough in Development of an Oral Insulin Tablet

On By ModernMedia
Source: Danilo Alvesd on Unsplash

A team of researchers working on developing oral insulin tablets as a replacement for daily insulin injections have made a game-changing discovery, which they published in Scientific Reports. The University of British Columbia team found that it’s not so much the composition of the pill so much as where it’s absorbed.

Researchers have discovered that insulin from the latest version of their oral tablets is absorbed by rats in the same way that injected insulin is.

“These exciting results show that we are on the right track in developing an insulin formulation that will no longer need to be injected before every meal, improving the quality of life, as well as mental health, of more than nine million Type 1 diabetics around the world.” said Professor Anubhav Pratap-Singh, the principal investigator.

He said the inspiration behind the search for a non-injectable insulin comes from his diabetic father, who has had to inject insulin for the past 15 years.

According to Dr Alberto Baldelli, they are now seeing nearly 100% of the insulin from their tablets go straight into the liver. In previous attempts to develop a drinkable insulin, most of the insulin would accumulate in the stomach.

“Even after two hours of delivery, we did not find any insulin in the stomachs of the rats we tested. It was all in the liver and this is the ideal target for insulin – it’s really what we wanted to see,” said PhD candidate Yigong Guo, first author of the study.

Changing the mode of delivery

When it comes to insulin delivery, injections are not the most comfortable or convenient for diabetes patients. But with several other oral insulin alternatives also being tested and developed, the UBC team worked to solve where and how to facilitate a higher absorption rate.

The team instead developed a different kind of tablet that isn’t made for swallowing, but instead dissolves when placed between the gum and cheek.

This method makes use of the buccal mucosa to deliver all the insulin to the liver without wasting or decomposing any insulin along the way.

“For injected insulin we usually need 100iu per shot. Other swallowed tablets being developed that go to the stomach might need 500iu of insulin, which is mostly wasted, and that’s a major problem we have been trying to work around,” explained Yigong.

Most swallowed insulin tablets in development tend to release insulin slowly over two to four hours, while fast-release injected insulin can be fully released in 30–120 minutes.

“Similar to the rapid-acting insulin injection, our oral delivery tablet absorbs after half an hour and can last for about two to four hours long,” said Dr Baldelli.

Potential broad benefits

The study is yet to go into human trials, and for this to happen Prof Pratap-Singh says they will require more time, funding and collaborators. But beyond the clear potential benefits to diabetics, he says the tablet they are developing could also be more sustainable, cost-effective and accessible.

“More than 300 000 Canadians have to inject insulin multiple times per day,” Prof Pratap-Singh said. “That is a lot of environmental waste from the needles and plastic from the syringe that might not be recycled and go to landfill, which wouldn’t be a problem with an oral tablet.”

He explains that their hope is to reduce the cost of insulin per dose since their oral alternative could be cheaper and easier to make. Pills would be easier for diabetics as well, since currently their doses need to be kept cool.

Source: University of British Columbia

Categories : CancerTags :

Neurofeedback Could Help Alleviate ‘Chemo Brain’

On By ModernMedia

Using neurofeedback to restore normal functioning in the brains of cancer patients could potentially alleviate the mental fogginess that many report after treatment, according to a new pilot study published in the Journal of Complementary and Integrative Medicine.

The UCLA study is one of the first to indicate that neurofeedback, or electroencephalogram (EEG) biofeedback, could help address cognitive deficits of cancer patients experiencing ‘chemo brain’, a constellation of symptoms that could include problems with memory, concentration and organisation, as well as other symptoms like trouble sleeping and emotional difficulties. In previous studies, neurofeedback, in which brain waves are trained to operate in optimal frequency patterns, has been shown to help improve cognitive function in patients with cognitive impairments like attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, stroke and seizures, as well as helped regulate brain activity in patients with substance use and post-traumatic stress disorders.

“The history of neurofeedback shows that it’s helpful for a whole range of disorders and symptoms. This study was an opportunity for seeing whether neurofeedback is something that could be helpful with chemo brain,” said study leader Stephen Sideroff, a UCLA professor who has used neurofeedback training with patients for over 20 years.

The study by Sideroff and UCLA colleagues David Wellisch and Valerie Yarema included nine female breast cancer patients between the ages of 21 and 65 who had completed chemotherapy at least one year earlier and complained of debilitating symptoms of chemo brain, which brought significant disruptions to their work and personal lives. A clinical nurse practitioner conducted a brief mental status interview with each patient to confirm that they had persistent difficulties with concentration, memory, organization and confusion. The patients selected for the study did not have a current breast cancer diagnosis, a present or recent diagnosis of a major depressive disorder or other mental illness, or used cognitive-altering medications that might confound study results.

Before the neurofeedback training sessions began, the study participants received neurocognitive and psychological tests, as well as a quantitative EEG to measure brain wave frequencies that could be compared to normative data. The pre-training quantitative EEGs shows that each study participant had abnormal brain waive activity compared to healthy adult brains.

The study participants received a series of 18 neurofeedback sessions, scheduled for 30 minutes each over a six-week period. During these sessions, sensors were placed on the scalp and earlobe to monitor brain wave frequencies. Patients were shown a monitor displaying these frequencies in bar graphs, and they were told their goal was to increase or decrease the amplitude of specific frequency ranges to turn each bar green. They received audio and visual feedback when they successfully shifted these amplitudes.

Quantitative EEGs taken after completion of the 18 neurofeedback sessions found that brain wave frequencies had significantly normalised in seven of the nine study participants, and significantly improved in the other two.

Neurocognitive tests also showed substantial improvements in the study participants’ information processing, executive set shifting and sustained visual attention. There was improvement for all in everyday functioning and overall psychological.

Study limitations include a small sample size and lack of a control group, and some were unable to complete the study in the allotted period.

“Our results are more impressive given we were not able to have subjects stick to the schedule,” Prof Sideroff said.

Prof Sideroff said the study results were strong enough to support further research into whether neurofeedback is an effective approach for addressing chemo brain and determining the ideal protocols for conducting neurofeedback training sessions.

Source: University of California – Los Angeles