“This is an ambitious and necessary project, supported and driven by ISCoS, on the basis of WHO indications, requesting high professional education of medical and paramedical professionals, aiming to give to Albanian people the same opportunities to be cured as other European citizens,” the Albanian branch of ISCoS said on its website.
TIRANA, June 12 – An initiative to set up a specialized centre for the global care of people suffering from spinal injuries in Albania has been initiated by the U.K-based International Spinal Cord Society (ISCoS), an independent international association having as its first aim the study of all the problems related to traumatic and non-traumatic lesions of the spinal cord. The initiative was launched in May 31, at the first scientific workshop on spinal cord injury featuring a multidisciplinary approach for a complex pathology held at Catholic University “Our Lady of Good Counsel” in Tirana.
“This is an ambitious and necessary project, supported and driven by ISCoS, on the basis of WHO indications, requesting high professional education of medical and paramedical professionals, aiming to give to Albanian people the same opportunities to be cured as other European citizens,” the Albanian branch of ISCoS said on its website.
The seminar was mainly aimed at the study of the most update concepts of the treatment of the spinal cord lesions, in the different stages of the post-traumatic period. It was referred not only to doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, but also to psychologists, social workers, administrators of the public health and persons operating in the industry of the medical materials as well to all the public institutions and civil society organizations contributing to the support and rehabilitation of people with disabilities, organizers said.
Dritan Pasku, an orthopaedist and traumatologist at the private Salus Hospital in Tirana was one of the keynote speakers in the seminar which also brought to Tirana several spinal cord foreign experts from Italy, Denmark and Belgium.
As many as 500 000 people worldwide suffer a spinal cord injury each year, according to a World Health Organization report released in late 2013. People with spinal cord injuries are 2 to 5 times more likely to die prematurely, with worse survival rates in low- and middle-income countries, says the report.
Males are most at risk of spinal cord injury between the ages of 20-29 years and 70 years and older, while females are most at risk between the ages of 15-19 years and 60 years and older. Studies report male to female ratios of at least 2:1 among adults. Up to 90 percent of spinal cord injury cases are due to traumatic causes such as road traffic crashes, falls and violence.
Most people with spinal cord injury experience chronic pain, and an estimated 20-30 percent show clinically significant signs of depression, says the WHO.
