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| Stornoway, Lewis, Western Isles of Scotland |
A few years ago Dr Niall MacDougall came down from Glasgow to spend 3 months at Barts-MS MS as a visiting fellow. This was just prior to him getting his first consultant job as an MSologist in Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was during this visit that he made me appreciate the scale of the MS crisis in Scotland and the burden it was placing on a clearly under-resourced Scottish Health Service. It also made me realise that in comparison MSers in London have it relatively good. Londoners have a choice; there are 6 regional neuroscience centres and MSers can vote with their feet. This is not the case in Scotland.
When Niall started his new job he was thrown into the deep end and immediately had a crisis with the loss of his MS nurse specialist. She was forced to leave because she could not cope with the workload. She has subsequently been replaced by two nurse specialists, but based on their caseload even two nurses is not enough. Niall, who is an incredibly caring neurologist, his MS nurses and their extended team of allied healthcare professionals are true MS Champions and are making a real difference to their Lanarkshire patients' lives.
Shortly after Niall's visit Alison and I were approached by Rachel Morrison, the MS Nurse Specialist who covers the Western Isles of Scotland, at the MS Trust meeting in Windsor in 2016. Rachel asked us if we would consider visiting the Islands and hosting an MS Research Day for her patients on the Island. After a false start in 2017, we have finally managed to get our acts together and will be spending three days on Lewis. The Western Isles does not have a resident neurologist and, therefore, all the patients have to travel to Glasgow to seek a neurological opinion. This can make it difficult for patients as trips from the island are often cancelled due to bad weather, but the fact that they have a rather exceptional caring MS nurse specialist in Rachel makes the real difference. For example, I have just written a letter of support for Rachel to the Western Isles Hospital to help set-up a new rehabilitation service for young people with disabilities. Rachel is clearly an MS Champion extraordinaire.
Shortly after Niall's visit Alison and I were approached by Rachel Morrison, the MS Nurse Specialist who covers the Western Isles of Scotland, at the MS Trust meeting in Windsor in 2016. Rachel asked us if we would consider visiting the Islands and hosting an MS Research Day for her patients on the Island. After a false start in 2017, we have finally managed to get our acts together and will be spending three days on Lewis. The Western Isles does not have a resident neurologist and, therefore, all the patients have to travel to Glasgow to seek a neurological opinion. This can make it difficult for patients as trips from the island are often cancelled due to bad weather, but the fact that they have a rather exceptional caring MS nurse specialist in Rachel makes the real difference. For example, I have just written a letter of support for Rachel to the Western Isles Hospital to help set-up a new rehabilitation service for young people with disabilities. Rachel is clearly an MS Champion extraordinaire.
Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis is one of the highest MS incidence and prevalence areas in the world. Based on recent estimates the incidence of MS in this region of Scotland is about 2.5x the incidence of MS in the SouthEast of England. The Glasgow MS Team and the other Scottish MS teams are doing their bit to manage the avalanche of patients, but the Scottish MS epidemic is very concerning and needs to be addressed. This is one of the reasons why we have launched our preventive neurology initiative to start working on preventing MS. Dr Ruth Dobson will be rejoining Barts-MS in May; her brief to set-up the infrastructure to do MS prevention trials. MS is almost certainly a preventable disease, or at least partly preventable and we can’t leave it to the next generation of researchers to sort out. We have to #ActNow to #PreventMS.
The good news is that at least five of the Glasgow MS team (Niall MacDougall, Pushkar Shah, Sarah-Jane Martin, Stewart Webb and Mhairi Coutts) will be partnering with Barts-MS over the next few days to run three separate educational activities on the Island. One for the healthcare professionals, a second for MSers and a third for the children of MSers. We plan to record the talks and will put them online for the wider community to watch.
You may know that Alison Thomson, our designer in residence, is Scottish and she has always wanted to give something back to her home country. The Stornoway MS Research weekend is one of the many activities Alison is involved in to help Scottish MSers. She has done an enormous amount of work organising this weekend, which makes Alison our super MS Champion.
I would like to thank the other members of the Barts-MS team (David/MouseDoctor, Gareth/MouseDoctor2, Sharmilee/NeuroDocGnanapavan, Klaus/DrK and Beki) for taking time-out over a weekend and for making the effort to help MSers on a relatively remote, but important, group of Islands on the Western tip of Scotland. You are all MS Champions.
As for me, I am in the doghouse. Today is my 54th Birthday and instead of spending it with my family and our dog relaxing I will be travelling to Stornoway. I am sure we will have a tipple (Harris Gin), or two, tonight to celebrate my birthday and contemplate what the next few days hold for us.