ISD Connection
The Official Newsletter of the International Society of
Dermatology Vol. 10, No. 3
• Fall 2016
* The Fall 2016 issue of the ISD Connection
newsletter is now available to view online: http://www.intsocderm.org/files/2016_FallNewsletter.pdf
STAYING CONNECTED
ISD Members Work Together to Fight Leishmaniasis in Yemen
As
featured in the Winter 2016 ISD newsletter, ISD member Dr. Mohamed Al-Kamel (Yemen)
has been working tirelessly to help leishmaniasis patients in war-torn Yemen
get needed medical care and supplies to treat this widespread disease. Relying
solely on donations and volunteers, Dr. Al-Kamel’s Regional Leishmaniasis
Control Center (RLCC) is treating upwards of 100 leishmaniasis patients per month.
Heeding
his plea for help for medical donations, ISD Executive Committee Member Dr. Dedee
Murrell (Australia/UK) went to work and initiated contact with Stiefel/GSK
pharmaceutical to secure the donation of a second year of free supplies of
anti-leishmaniasis medication (Pentostam® injections) for Dr. Al-Kamel’s RLCC.
Although
thousands of miles apart, Dr. Murrell and Dr. Al-Kamel came together in the
true spirit of ISD by staying connected to help those in greatest need.
“Thanks
to the ISD and particularly Dr. Dedee Murrell. The generous three-year donation
of medicine to treat leishmaniasis, donated by Stiefel through the
“Medicine-For-All” program, will help the countless Yemeni patients -- mostly
women and children in the poorest rural areas -- who suffer from the severe
physical and moral consequences of this disease. I consider the Teledermatology
program of the RLCC as a model communication technology in which ISD members
around the world can help one another -- even when they are thousands of miles
apart -- in such a way as Dr. Murrell and I worked together to support such
needy patients with the most needed item: the medicine. I am proud we put the neglected
leishmaniasis disease in Yemen and its linked issues under the focus of the
local and global scientific communities.”
-- Dr. Mohamed A. Al-Kamel, Founding
Chair of the Regional Leishmaniasis Control Center (RLCC), Yemen
“At the EADV in Istanbul in October
2013, former ISD Executive Vice President, Luitgard Wiest, introduced me to Dr.
Mohamed Al-Kamel, whom she knew from her volunteer work in Ethiopia over many
years. She asked me to help him with a grant application he wanted to put in to
the ILDS with the support of ISD for some diagnostic ELISA equipment for the Leishmaniasis
centre he had set up. The grant application gained the support of the ISD
executive committee and later turned out to be successful. Then, the idea came
to me to request donation of the sodium pentogluconate (pentostam) from Stiefel/GSK.
Through the Women’s Dermatological Society (WDS), I had met Charlie Stiefel, a
great supporter of the WDS. At that time, I had also been working with GSK to
design a new clinical trial for pemphigus. Through these connections, I reached
the right person at GSK-Stiefel and wrote a request letter in November 2013 for
a compassionate supply of $10,000 per year for 3 years, signed by Drs. Kerdel,
Handog, Reizner and myself, on behalf of ISD. Not only did GSK agree, but they
promised $30,000 worth of pentostam for 3 years, which is enough to treat about
2,000 patients per year. This is one example of how ISD can assist its members
in poorer countries gain access to medications for needy patients.”
-- Dr. Dedee Murrell, Chair, ISD
Communications Committee
* For the fall article and other stories, The Fall
2016 issue of the ISD Connection newsletter is now available to view online: http://www.intsocderm.org/files/2016_FallNewsletter.pdf
