Visit our website: www.uhb.nhs.uk
For patients, staff, visitors and volunteers
JANUARY 2018
Page 8 & 9 Positive action to support colleagues
Page 2 New registry to help patients
Page 12 Working together to help patients Transplant surgeon awarded MBE
Patient Phil Cross shares how specialists helped him get back on his feet after an horrific accident. Full story on page 5
Fresh hope for all scar victims The UK’s first specialist medical research centre to minimise the impact of scarring and improve the lives of Armed Forces personnel and civilians wounded in conflicts and terrorist attacks is being established. The £4.5million Scar Free Foundation Centre for Conflict Research, to be based at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB), will lead a national programme of clinical, psychological and scientific research. The three-year initiative, funded in part by £2.95 million LIBOR funding, was announced by the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, in his Autumn Statement. An additional £1.6 million will be funded by our Trust, the University of Birmingham, the University of the West of England, and The JP Moulton Charitable Foundation. The new centre will bring together uniformed and civilian scientists and clinicians to spearhead the development of new treatments across the care cycle, from the point of injury through to rehabilitation – and place UHB at the centre of scar research. National charity The Scar Free Foundation will direct the Centre’s research in partnership with UHB and The CASEVAC Club – made up of wounded veterans from recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Centre will have clear benefit to military personnel as well as the public
Brendan Eley The Scar Free Foundation Brendan Eley, Chief Executive, The Scar Free Foundation, said: “This marks a major milestone in our goal of scar free healing. Improving wound treatment and scar outcomes for those caught up in military or civilian conflict is our driving force behind this initiative, and we are hugely grateful for the support of HM Treasury. “The Scar Free Foundation Centre for Conflict Wound Research will have clear benefit to military personnel as well as the general public, and is of urgent relevance within the context of increasing civilian terrorist and acid attacks. ”The Centre will investigate how the body heals and protects itself following the types of trauma that are likely in future conflicts and terrorist attacks, including chemical, burn, and blast injury. By understanding the biological processes of scarring this research will, over time, deliver new treatments.” It will initially run two flagship research
projects: the first will develop and undertake the ‘first-in-human’ clinical trial of a new conflict-ready and transportable dressing which helps the skin heal with reduced scarring, led by the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Inflammation and Ageing. The second project, led by the Centre for Appearance Research, based at the University of the West of England, will pilot tailored psychosocial treatments to help seriously injured Armed Forces personnel, recruited from the CASEVAC Club, cope with life with an altered, scarred appearance. Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, Chair, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We are honoured to host The Scar Free Foundation Centre for Conflict Wound Research at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and provide matched funding support for the Centre. “We are the home of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine and the sole provider of medical services to military personnel evacuated from overseas via the Military Aero Medical Evacuation service. “This unique environment, of embedded military and civilian care with defence personnel fully integrated with NHS staff to treat both military and civilian patients, means we are the ideal place to set up the Centre.”
A Birmingham surgeon who performed the first organ transplant in Ghana has been honoured with an MBE in the New Year Honours 2018. Mr Andrew Ready, Consultant Renal Transplant Surgeon at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust was recognised for his decade of overseas development work with Transplant Links Community (TLC) and ‘for services to renal transplantation’. Mr Ready is Medical Director of TLC, a charitable organisation dedicated to supporting renal transplantation in the developing world. In this role he has led transplant teams to Ghana, Nigeria, Trinidad, Jamaica, Barbados and Nepal and is currently developing plans with countries as far afield as Uganda and Papua New Guinea. His overseas work with Transplant Links is supported by renal transplant experts from the kidney transplant unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, part of UHB. The TLC team includes the Trust’s surgeons, kidney specialists, nurses and operating theatre technicians who give up their own time to travel. Mr Ready said: “I am truly honoured to receive this award. Nevertheless, in accepting it, I recognise the contributions made by so many others to the work we have undertaken with Transplant Links. I am most grateful to my colleagues in TLC for their determination to make this project succeed and to the personnel from UHB who have travelled with us, in their own time, to support the initiative. I also recognise the support that Dame Julie gave when I first spoke to her of starting the overseas activity and, for that, I am most grateful.” Dame Julie Moore, Chief Executive of UHB, said: “I am delighted Andrew has been honoured in this way: it is a welldeserved recognition of the work to share skills and, ultimately, save lives in developing countries.” Transplant Links was established in 2006 by a group of British doctors with many years of experience in kidney transplantation, wanting to share their skills with doctors and surgeons in developing countries. TLC Founder and Chief Executive, Dr Jennie Jewitt-Harris, said: “It’s great that Andrew’s hard work has been recognised. Continued on p2
Delivering the Brainteasers, best in care mind benders and more p15 • Find your way around: Hospital maps p16 Puzzle page: