Aid mission medics save lives (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Aid mission medics save lives

5:08am Wednesday 5th March 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

Hundreds of lives will be saved thanks to Bradford medics who travelled to India to distribute vital supplies of medicine.

A team of six from Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust took 580,000 units of Factor VIII, a blood clotting agent used to treat haemo-philiacs, to the Little Flower Hospital in Angamaly, Kerala.

The life-saving medicine, valued at £300,000, will allow the Catholic mission hospital to treat its 800 haemophiliac patients, many of them children, for nine months.

Haemophilia is a disorder of the blood-clotting system.

People with the condition may bleed internally, particularly into the joints, such as knees, elbows and ankles. Without treatment it can lead to disability or death.

Along with large supplies of donated syringes, needles, swabs and educational material, the Factor VIII was taken over by Dr Liakat Parapia, consultant haematologist and clinical director of pathology at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, and his son Jamil Parapia, who is head of languages at Bingley Grammar School and took the opportunity to visit schools in Kerala, Gillian Stevens, biomedical scientist, Penelope Cook, transfusion practitioner, Jillian Parkinson, transfusion practitioner, and Hugh McCarthy, a dentist - haemophiliacs can bleed to death having teeth removed.

During the five-day trip they also took part in lectures, workshops and laboratory training.

"It will literally save lives," said Dr Parapia. "This was our second trip there since the World Federation of Haemo-philia twinned us with Kerala. Last time we took out 200,000 units of Factor VIII.

"The treatment is given free to the patients, mainly children, who have no other access to Factor VIII because of the cost. These children would die without this treatment."

Bradford has previously been twinned with the Haemophilia Society of Maharashtra in Pune, India and the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, where staff helped refurbish a ward for cancer patients and people with bleeding disorders. The twining is supported by grants from the World Federation of Haemophilia and the Factor VIII for the latest trip was supplied by pharmaceutical companies based in Leeds and Liverpool.

The Bradford team also took out a cheque for £2,200 which was raised locally by Bradford paediatrician Dr Adrian Minford, from a collection at his daughter's wedding, Dr Parapia, who gave the cash in lieu of Christmas presents and a night at the Aagrah in Shipley.

"The weather was hot and there were lots of mosquitoes, but what we feared most was Dengue fever as there was an outbreak," said Dr Parapia.

At the end of the trip the Bradford team was presented with a carved wooden elephant head, which will be hung in the newly refurbished day unit on ward seven at Bradford Royal Infirmary.