Health & Wellbeing

A UK trial to see whether specialist medical sniffer dogs can detect coronavirus in human being is set to begin.

The dogs are already trained to detect odours of certain cancers, malaria and Parkinson’s disease by the charity Medical Detection Dogs.

The first phase of the trials will be led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicines, along with the charity and Durham University.

It has been backed with £500,000 of government funding.

The trial will explore whether the ‘Covid Dogs’ – made up of Labradors and cocker spaniels – can spot the virus in humans odour samples before symptoms appear.

It will establish whether so-called bio-detection dogs, which could each screen up to 250 people per hour, could be used as a new early warning measure to detect Covid-19.

The first phase will involve NHS staff in London hospitals collecting odour samples from those who are infected by coronavirus and those who are not infected.

Six dogs will then go through training to identify the virus from the samples.

More than 10 years of research gathering by Medical Detection Dogs has shown that the dogs can be trained to sniff out the odour of disease at the equivalent dilution of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools of water.

Claire Guest, the charity’s co-founder and chief executive, said that she was “sure our dogs will be able to find the odour of Covid-19”.

If that proves to be the case, the dogs will then move into a “second phase to test them in live situations, following which we hope to work with other agencies to train more dogs for development”, she said.

James Logan, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines, said: “Our previous work has shown that malaria has a distinctive odour, and with medical detection dogs, we successfully trained dogs to accurately detect malaria.

“This, combined with the knowledge that respiratory diseases can change body odour, makes us hopeful that the dogs can also detect Covid-19”.

Black men and women in Great Britain are said to be nearly twice as likely to die from coronavirus as the indigenous white population according to the Office of National Statistics.

The analysis by the ONS shows that inequality is persisting after age, where people live and levels of deprivation and prior health was taken into account.

People from South Asian communities – in particularly India, Bangladesh and Pakistan – is also said to show a significantly higher risk of Covid-19 fatalities.

The government has now launched a review into the major issue.

The ONS analysis combines data on deaths involving coronavirus with information on ethnicity from the 2011 census.

Men and women from Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities have an increased risk of between 30 and 80 per cent, the analysis found.

The ONS have suggested that some of the risk might be caused by other social and economic factors that are not included in the data.

It said that some BAME groups may be over-represented in public-facing occupations and so more at risk of being infected while at work.

Shadow Justice Minister, David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, said that the greater risk faced by Black people “was appalling”.

He Tweeted: ‘It is urgent the cause of this disproportionality is investigated. Action must be taken to protect Black men and women – as well as people from all backgrounds – from the virus.’

People from a Black background account for just over 3% of the population, but account for 6% of coronavirus fatalities.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, tragic losses are being faced, often under difficult circumstances. And, for many, living in lockdown is proving to be very tough.

But for those who have lost a loved one or a friend, during this time, it can be even harder.

Now, to help people who are feeling isolated and are suffering as a result, it can be even harder.

But, a new bereavement helpline is available for people in Birmingham and Solihull in the West Midlands. And the service is available five days a week.

NHS Birmingham and Solihull CCG (Clinical Commissioning Group) was created to plan commission health services and work as part of a large, complex system of health and social care which includes local authorities, providers, the independent sector and GP practices.

Dr Angela Brady, Deputy Chief Medical Officer at NHS Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group, said: “Losing a loved one is always difficult, but for those who live alone, or are cut off from their usual support network, it can be extremely difficult”.

“It is important to remember that taking care of our mental and emotional wellbeing during the pandemic is just as important as our physical health.

“Being able to talk to someone, especially in a time of need, can help to alleviate some of the stress and grief that comes with losing a relative or friend”.

A membership organisation with 170 GP practices and a clinically-led Government Body, NHS Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group looks after a population of around 1.3 million people with a budget in excess of £1.9 billion

Solihull Hospital, in the West Midlands, is closing its minor injuries unit with anyone who has the Covid-18 virus will be treated elsewhere.

That means that all non-surgical work will be moved to the nearby Heartlands, as well as the Queen Elizabeth Hospitals in Birmingham.

The University Hospital’s Birmingham Trust said that it was possible due to the falling number of cases in the region.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service have said that patients who are due to receive elective surgery will be screened beforehand for coronavirus and may have to self-isolate from members of their families before procedures to reduce the risk.

The initial focus will be on providing time-critical surgeries such as cancer operations.

Jonathon Brotherton, the Trust’s chief operating officer, said: “In order to do that, we need to be able to give the public the confidence that the hospital is, as far as we can possibly make it, Covid-free, and that then will encourage people to come back to the NHS for essential treatment that they need that they are not currently able to access, or willing to access, because of their concerns”.

The changes mark the Trust’s second phase of its Covid-19 response, which is planned to be operational from June 1.

The president of Tanzania has said that he will be sending a plane to Madagascar to import a herbal tonic which has been touted as a cure for coronavirus by the country’s president.
Congo-Brazzaville’s president has also promised to import the drink.

It is produced from the Artemisia plant – the source of an ingredient used in malaria treatment.

WHO (The World Health Organisation) has said that there is no proof of any cure and it has advised people against self-medication.

The president’s chief of staff, Lova Hasinirina Ranoromaro, said that the drink was launched as ‘Covid Organic’ and was being marketed after being tested on fewer than 20 people over a period of three weeks.

In response to the launch, in a statement, WHO said that they did not recommend “self-medication with any medicines… as a prevention or cure for coronavirus”.

It reiterated earlier comments made by the head of WHO, Tedros Ahanom Ghedreyasus, who said that there were “no short-cuts” to finding effective mediation to finding a cure to coronavirus.

International trials were under way to find an effective treatment, the WHO said.

Speaking on TV, Tanzania’s President John Magafuli said that he was already in contact with the Madagascan government and would despatch and aircraft to the island nation to collect the medicine.

He said: “I am in communication with Madagascar and they have already written a letter saying that they have discovered some medicine.

“We will despatch a flight to bring the medicine so that Tanzanians can also benefit.

“So, as the government, we are working day and night”.

President Magafuli has been widely criticised for his reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. He has encouraged the public to continue to gather in places of worship, while much of the world was in lockdown.

According to WHO, Tanzania’s delay in enforcing strict measures to prevent further spread of coronavirus in the country could have led to the spike in positive cases.

There are 480 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the country, while Congo-Brazzaville has 229 and Madagascar has 135.

Solihull Hospital, in the West Midlands, is closing its minor injuries unit with anyone who has the Covid-18 virus will be treated elsewhere.

That means that all non-surgical work will be moved to the nearby Heartlands, as well as the Queen Elizabeth Hospitals in Birmingham.

The University Hospital’s Birmingham Trust said that it was possible due to the falling number of cases in the region.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service have said that patients who are due to receive elective surgery will be screened beforehand for coronavirus and may have to self-isolate from members of their families before procedures to reduce the risk.

The initial focus will be on providing time-critical surgeries such as cancer operations.

Jonathon Brotherton, the Trust’s chief operating officer, said: “In order to do that, we need to be able to give the public the confidence that the hospital is, as far as we can possibly make it, Covid-free, and that then will encourage people to come back to the NHS for essential treatment that they need that they are not currently able to access, or willing to access, because of their concerns”.

The changes mark the Trust’s second phase of its Covid-19 response, which is planned to be operational from June 1.

With the Birmingham Nightingale Hospital lying underused and still to take in any coronavirus patients, the NHS is hoping that it stays that way – as it would be a tribute to the work that they are already doing in and around the region.

Since it was opened by The Duke of Cambridge, Prince William, the temporary hospital - built on the outskirts of the city – has remained empty.

Created to provide extra capacity to ease pressure on ever-increasing local services as far as Derbyshire Shropshire and Staffordshire, the 4,000 patient capacity site has remained idle, with use of the 70,000 sq metres building yet to be taken up during the pandemic.

The chief executive of University Hospital NHS Foundation, Dr David Rosser, has said that “it’s a good thing that the hospital has yet to receive a patient.

“It shows that the NHS has absorbed the extra pressure”.

He added: “It was never going to be a great thing to have to open this extra capacity because it didn’t come with new staff”.

The Midlands has matched London in being the highest number of coronavirus-linked deaths.

Birmingham Nightingale Hospital was created to be a step-down facility – meaning that it would be receiving patients who are recovering from coronavirus, or who are not ideal for use of ventilators.

By way of saying ‘Thank You’ for saving her life, Birmingham woman, Michelle Hemmings is looking to raise funds by organising a fundraising appeal on behalf of Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust Charity. She is looking for people to join her in making a difference – in aid of donating gift bags to newly transplanted patients.

Papworth Fundraising Committee Lead Transplant Nurse, Richard Quigley, and others, have decided to present each newly transplanted patient with a gift bag once they come out of ITU.

The gift bags will consist of a variety of useful items, such as – the infamous blue book from the transplant team; as well as an RPH (Royal Papworth Hospital) pen, socks, sweets, tissue, etc.

Michelle suffered for 21-years with Interstitial Lung Disease and mid Pulmonary Hypertension and, in 2018, was one of five patients whose lives were saved when they all received at transplant at Royal Papworth Hospital - in under-36 hours.

“I am so blessed to have had the transplant and be able to do so many things which I was previously unable to do”, she said. “I am so grateful to my surgeons, nurses and all the staff at Papworth Hospital.

“The Transplant Team there really turned my life around.

“Now, I see myself as an inspiration to others who are in the position I was before my transplant. And, as such, I want to give back to the RPH.

“Sponsoring a patient means a great deal to them and will make each patient feel like they thought of in what is already proving to be tumultuous, trying times. This truly means an awful lot to me.

“I would like to take this opportunity – in advance - to thank you for any contributions made”.

To sponsor a patient, you can do so by donating only £10 on Michelle’s gofundme page.

The UK government is likely to meet or “come close” to its target of 100,000 daily coronavirus tests, Community Secretary, Robert Jericks has said.

Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, said that the government would achieve the aim by the end of April – which has now passed.

Just over 81,000 tests across the UK took place on April 30, but ministers said that there was capacity for more.

It comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the UK was now “passed the peak of the outbreak”.

Jercins said: “It looks like we will either meet the target, but if we don’t, we will come close.

“The targets are stepping stones. The foundations are in place for a strong national testing network”.

The total number of people who have died after testing positive for coronavirus in UK hospitals and the wider community is now 26,771, a rise of 674 on the previous day.

A doctor who was one of the ones who was making a desperate urge for volunteers to make much-needed visors for NHS staff – due to the shortage at her hospital – has said that she was “overwhelmed” by the response.

More than 75,000 face shields have been produced in just weeks after the appeal was made.

Following the plea made by Dr Deborah Braham, the Visor Army project spread on social media and has found support among high-profile television and fashion celebrities.

It comes after an investigation which found that the UK government failed to buy protective hit to cope with the pandemic..

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, people in Ghana have come to accept that their lives have been turned upside down.

They have learned to cope with things that nobody has ever dreamt about – like hugging or shaking hands.

Social distancing, self-isolation and quarantine have all become terms of everyday use.

Schools have been closed, and parents are discovering just how much food that growing children eat.

With things that are often talked about now almost passé, the one thing at the top o the list is the virtue of deaths – and the process after.

Although the death-count for Covid-19 cases in the country is a comparatively low number of 16, the ban on public gatherings means that private burials are still allowed, but with no more than 25 people present.

So, funeral services in the country has gone ‘hi-tech’ with proceedings now being streamed online. Which means dress-restrictions are not paramount?

But, it has still court reaction, with one Ghanaian journalist, Elisabeth Ohene, saying: “I joined a funeral online recently dressed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

“Nobody attends funerals dressed like that”.

Away from funerals, at the centre of the coronavirus pandemic is the parliamentary election, which is due to take place on December 7.

With Ghanaian elections usually keenly contested, with campaigns often load, chaotic and crowd-centric, delegations leading up to then will need mass overhauls and meticulous preparations.

Mondelez International, makers of the UK’s favourite snacks including Cadbury and Oreo, has joined forces with engineering company, 3P Innovation , to help produce thousands o medical visors every day to protect thousands of frontline NHS staff.

The food manufacturer is repurposing its 3D printing technology, which is normally used to make chocolate sculptures at Bournville, the home of Cadbury, to help print the medical visors.

This builds on a fascinating history of Cadbury’s Bournville factory stepping in to help the nation in times of need, having set up Bounville Utilities Limited in the 1940s to make gas masks, jerricans, service respirators and aeroplane parts for Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers during World War II.

3P launched an industry-wide initiative to bring together businesses and individuals who can help produce, assemble and distribute the visors to hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and clinics across the UK.

Mondelez is helping to produce the hard-plastic bands which connect the top and bottom of the visor. It has also invested money into the project so 3P can buy injection mould technology, which will mean that the visors can be mass produced.

3P have already delivered the first visors to a Warwickshire NHS clinic and will be scaling up their operations, with the aim of making and delivering up to 10,000 units every week.

Louise Stigant, UK MD at Mondelez International, said: “The NHS and other essential frontline services are doing an incredible job and we want to help them wherever we can.

“I am extremely proud that our research and food engineering teams have come up with a creative way to repurpose our chocolate making skills and technology, so we can make and print parts for the medical visors.

“By working in partnership with 3P and other businesses we can scale our operations and help protect those who are working so hard to protect us and beat coronavirus”.

The Managing Director at 3D innovation, Tom Bailey, said: “We have now set up the production line and the finished products are on their way to end users.

“Thanks to the generous support from Mondelez, we have purchased an injection mould tool which is set to make a huge difference to the volumes we can produce. We are now looking for on-going funding, which is essential to make sure we can continue to purchase components and run the production line”.

3P is appealing for other manufacturers and businesses with 3D printing technology and logistics services to support, so that they can continue to make and supply the medical visors to more NHS workers and other frontline services such as care homes and prison staff.

Mondelez is also contributing over £2million in the UK to help local communities, charities, food-banks and people working in the NHS and other frontline services.

Newly released data from the NHS has revealed the ethnic breakdown of the patents at hospitals in London who have died from coronavirus.

Black people living in the city account for 15% of its population, but take-up 16% of those who have died from the Covid-19 virus.

Epidemiologist, Dr Shikta Das, said that there was a high rate of BAME people among front line workers, who were exposed to the greater risk.

But she did say that it was difficult to draw conclusions as data that may be needed to be more specific to areas of London.

The UK’s capital has seen nearly 5,000 deaths that were linked to the virus.

NHS analysis has shown a disproportionate number of Black people had died from coronavirus in London.

Dr Dass said that she believed that one factor for the disproportionality was that people from a BAME background were over-represented in many key working industries and were at a greater risk of becoming infected.

She said: “Twenty per cent of NHS workers are from a BAME background – with forty-four per cent of doctors. In this group there is a doctor, nurse, technician, bus driver, shelf-stacker and care worker. All of these groups tend to be more exposed to Covid-19 directly.

“The more exposure you have, the more lethal the dosage is. So, it’s no surprise that these people are dying”.

A Public Health England spokesperson said that there was evidence to suggest that coronavirus was having a disproportionate impact on Black and Minority Ethnic people.

There is a growing concern that standard personal protective equipment (PPE), which often has a unisex design, does not always be fit for women properly.

PPE is essential for protecting frontline workers who are exposed to coronavirus.

The Department of Health (DoH) said that the kit is designed to protect “both gendres”.

However, healthcare workers are saying that even the smaller sizes are often too big for some women – who make up 77% of the National Health Service (NHS) workforce, according to NHS Digital figures from 2018.

If it is too big it can be less effective in providing a complete barrier to the virus.

In a statement the DoH said: “Some products are available in different sizes to enable it to fit both small and large frames”.

However, the Royal College of Nurses described “one-size-fits-all” PPE as “problematic and restrictive” when it can be worn for up to 12 hours during shifts.

Some female NHS workers have taken to social media to share photos of themselves wearing badly fitting PPE.

It is nutrient especially important for the health of immune systems leaving people to wonder whether vitamin D may help reduce the risk of contracting the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.

It’s important to note that there’s no cure for Covid-19 and no known prevention measures apart from social distancing, proper hygiene practices.

That said, some research show that having healthy levels of vitamin D supplement can help to keep the immune system healthy and may protect against respiratory illness in general.

With the virus counting for well over 100,000 cases in the UK alone, the one abiding fact is the disproportionate level of people who are affected are from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic (BAME) background.

Figures showed that whilst accounting for 13% of the population, people from a BAME background make up 35% of coronavirus cases in intensive care and 70% of fatalities from frontline medical staff. Figure further showed that when the number of Covid-19 deaths reached over 13,000, of those over 19% were BAME.

Dr Alison Tedstone, chief nutritionist at Public Health England, said: “People with a vitamin D deficiency (including: people with dark skin, from African, African-Caribbean and South Asian background) should take a supplement all year round”, in order to protect musculoskeletal.

Generated from the exposure of sunlight, vitamin D – otherwise known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’ – is crucial to the immune system, as well as healthy bones, muscles and teeth.

With nearly three quarters of the coronavirus deaths by staff employed in the NHS and social care sectors coming from a BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) background, public data has also revealed that 19% of patients to die in England are from an ethnic or mixed-heritage background.

Dr Habib Naqvior, the NHS Director for Workforce Race & Equality, said: “With the fact that a high percentage of staff dying from this pandemic coming from a Black and Ethnic background is proving very worrying for us.

“This is proving to be very challenging for us but we very much need to rise to the challenge.

“What we need to do is look at what we can do by way of putting the right things in place right now to support our staff”.

Shadow Equalities Secretary, Marsha de Cordova, has called for the government to “urgently investigate why people from a BAME background are far more vulnerable to the virus”.

This follows the chair of the BMA (British Medical Association), Dr Chaand Nagpaul CBE, saying the first ten doctors named as having died from Covid-19 were all from BAME communities.

He called it “hugely disturbing and extremely worrying”.

The Chief Medical Officer in England, Chris Whitty, said that it is critical that we find out which ethnic groups are most at risk.

“It remains unclear why some ethnic groups appear to be more vulnerable”, he said.

“I have had discussions with leading scientists on this matter by way of teasing this apart”.