As we approach Christmas, I do get sad from time to time as it was a time of year my dad really liked. He loved giving, especially to his grandchildren and he absolutely loved Christmas day and the meal and most importantly the sprouts! Last year was the first Christmas without him and it was hard. Hopefully this year will be a tad easier.
As I write the last blog post of 2024, I reflect on what this year has been for our family. It’s been a rather big year with lots of momentous birthdays and anniversaries on top of the huge holiday to China to find my paternal grandfather’s village. So there has been a lot to be grateful for.
We mooted the idea of going abroad for Christmas, to give us a break from the humdrum of normal life. We’ve tried Christmas abroad a couple of times before, to hot, sunny places on the other side of the globe and to cold places in the northern hemisphere but the kids said no, it had to be at home this year.
One memorable year, we did spend Christmas on Ngapali beach in Burma with my dad and the kids. It is memorable because I had never been to Ngapali before except in my mum’s pregnant tummy and that we got to go there with my dad who is no longer with us and that travel to Burma is exceedingly difficult nowadays.
However, the main focus on the day was not on ourselves or what we’d bought and given to each other. The hotel at which we stayed hosted lunch for all the orphans from the local orphanage/monastery, giving them all a huge wrapped gift each and then donating the rest of the food to the monastery plus all the donations of money from the hotel guests such as ourselves. It was a very moving and heartfelt scene to witness.
Medicine, as a career, attracts people who want to help others and poor countries in Asia and Africa have colossal healthcare needs. When my dad and I spent time in Rangoon, working in community clinics and teaching junior doctors, we felt overwhelmed with the task in hand and completely inconsequential given how great the demands were. No one cared about skin cancers and photo-ageing there and the main dermatological problems were fungal or due to scabies. People were more worried about going blind or not being able to work.
It was therefore interesting to read in the Economist about “neglected tropical diseases” or NTDs. These include conditions such as visceral leishmaniasis (or kala-azar), sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), river blindness (onchocerciasis), elephantiasis (lymphatic filariasis), schistosomiasis, scabies, leprosy and others. They are all conditions with devastating health and social consequences, are mainly due to parasites, fungi, bacteria and viruses and affect the poorest communities in tropical areas. And because they affect the poorest people in society, big pharmaceutical companies have tended to ignore them.
World Neglected Tropical Disease day.
The World Health Assembly has recognised January 30th as World Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) Day and has done so since 2021. It has aims to reduce deaths, infection rates, and improve treatments in 20 mainstream NTDs by 2030.
[https://www.who.int/teams/control-of-neglected-tropical-diseases/ending-ntds-together-towards-2030]
Because of this initiative, more and more philanthropic organisations are getting involved.
Who are they?
The Carter Center in America has been at the forefront of the fight against NTDs and has nearly eliminated guinea worm (dracunculiasis).
[https://www.cartercenter.org/health/carter-center-neglected-tropical-diseases.html]
The END fund is another organisation which co-ordinates donations, funds from governments and international agencies.
[https://end.org/what-we-do/]
The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) works by developing treatments for neglected patients, ensuring they are affordable, available and adapted to the communities who need them. The Nobel prize for Chemistry this year was awarded for AlphaFold, an AI protein structure prediction model used by DNDi to accelerate drug discovery for leishmaniasis and Chagas disease.
[https://dndi.org/news/2024/nobel-prize-chemistry-awarded-for-alphafold-an-ai-model-used-dndi-for-neglected-diseases/]
So this Christmas, instead of stressing about inanities, use it instead as a time to celebrate what you have and who you have in your life.
Kind regards,
Sandy
Dr Sandy Flann, Consultant Dermatologist
