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Tuesday, March 29, 2005A team of Australian surgeons yesterday reattached both hands and one foot to 10-year-old Perth boy, Terry Vo, after a brick wall which collapsed during a game of basketball fell on him, severing the limbs. The wall gave way while Terry performed a slam-dunk, during a game at a friend’s birthday party.

The boy was today awake and smiling, still in some pain but in good spirits and expected to make a full recovery, according to plastic surgeon, Mr Robert Love.

“What we have is parts that are very much alive so the reattached limbs are certainly pink, well perfused and are indeed moving,” Mr Love told reporters today.

“The fact that he is moving his fingers, and of course when he wakes up he will move both fingers and toes, is not a surprise,” Mr Love had said yesterday.

“The question is more the sensory return that he will get in the hand itself and the fine movements he will have in the fingers and the toes, and that will come with time, hopefully. We will assess that over the next 18 months to two years.

“I’m sure that he’ll enjoy a game of basketball in the future.”

The weight and force of the collapse, and the sharp brick edges, resulted in the three limbs being cut through about 7cm above the wrists and ankle.

Terry’s father Tan said of his only child, the injuries were terrible, “I was scared to look at him, a horrible thing.”

The hands and foot were placed in an ice-filled Esky and rushed to hospital with the boy, where three teams of medical experts were assembled, and he was given a blood transfusion after experiencing massive blood loss. Eight hours of complex micro-surgery on Saturday night were followed by a further two hours of skin grafts yesterday.

“What he will lose because it was such a large zone of traumatised skin and muscle and so on, he will lose some of the skin so he’ll certainly require lots of further surgery regardless of whether the skin survives,” said Mr Love said today.

The boy was kept unconscious under anaesthetic between the two procedures. In an interview yesterday, Mr Love explained why:

“He could have actually been woken up the next day. Because we were intending to take him back to theatre for a second look, to look at the traumatised skin flaps, to close more of his wounds and to do split skin grafting, it was felt the best thing to do would be to keep him stable and to keep him anaesthetised.”

Professor Wayne Morrison, director of the respected Bernard O’Brien Institute of Microsurgery and head of plastic and hand surgery at Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said he believed the operation to be a world first.

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

A Nigerian Air Force jet fighter mistook refugees for rebels yesterday, Nigerian military said, firing on a camp in Rann, Borno State. Dozens of refugees and aid workers died.

The lowest estimate from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is of 50 dead. The BBC estimates at least 52 dead, while one Borno State official is attributed by AP as saying over 100 are dead. MSF say at least 200 were wounded.

The Red Cross said at least six of its staff died and twelve more injured. The impoverished region, in the northeast of the nation, has suffered severe famine as conflict interrupts agriculture. Farmers are unable to work owing to bombs on their land. The Red Cross said volunteers were at the camp, home to thousands, to distribute food.

The military said the Air Force was dispatched to deal with “remnants” of the Boko Haram militant group, which it claims to be in a final push against. Major General Leo Irabor, who led the operation, said, “Unfortunately, the strike was conducted but it turned out that other civilians were somewhere around the area and they were affected”. Irabor said two soldiers were amongst the dead and others were wounded.

Military spokesman General Rabe Abubakar said the military are “all in pain” after the disaster, adding “in a military operation such as this, from time to time these things do occur.” Irabor promised an investigation. President Muhammadu Buhari said he was saddened by “this regrettable operational mistake” and sought calm.

“This large-scale attack on vulnerable people who have already fled from extreme violence is shocking and unacceptable,” MSF operational chief Dr Jean-Clément Cabrol said. The Red Cross said it has staff and facilities ready in neighbouring Cameroon and Chad to assist. “The whole camp is controlled by the army and no one can come in or out without being checked,” said MSF head of emergencies Hugues Robert. Robert added the group knew travel and work in the area was dangerous, and took precautions.

Helicopters have been evacuating the wounded, including a United Nations helicopter which brought four medical personnel and 400kg (900lb) of emergency medical aid, and left with eight wounded Red Cross workers. The UN is in the midst of an appeal for aid to the famine-hit region.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

A team of eight transplant surgeons in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, USA, led by reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow, age 58, have successfully performed the first almost total face transplant in the US, and the fourth globally, on a woman so horribly disfigured due to trauma, that cost her an eye. Two weeks ago Dr. Siemionow, in a 23-hour marathon surgery, replaced 80 percent of her face, by transplanting or grafting bone, nerve, blood vessels, muscles and skin harvested from a female donor’s cadaver.

The Clinic surgeons, in Wednesday’s news conference, described the details of the transplant but upon request, the team did not publish her name, age and cause of injury nor the donor’s identity. The patient’s family desired the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The Los Angeles Times reported that the patient “had no upper jaw, nose, cheeks or lower eyelids and was unable to eat, talk, smile, smell or breathe on her own.” The clinic’s dermatology and plastic surgery chair, Francis Papay, described the nine hours phase of the procedure: “We transferred the skin, all the facial muscles in the upper face and mid-face, the upper lip, all of the nose, most of the sinuses around the nose, the upper jaw including the teeth, the facial nerve.” Thereafter, another team spent three hours sewing the woman’s blood vessels to that of the donor’s face to restore blood circulation, making the graft a success.

The New York Times reported that “three partial face transplants have been performed since 2005, two in France and one in China, all using facial tissue from a dead donor with permission from their families.” “Only the forehead, upper eyelids, lower lip, lower teeth and jaw are hers, the rest of her face comes from a cadaver; she could not eat on her own or breathe without a hole in her windpipe. About 77 square inches of tissue were transplanted from the donor,” it further described the details of the medical marvel. The patient, however, must take lifetime immunosuppressive drugs, also called antirejection drugs, which do not guarantee success. The transplant team said that in case of failure, it would replace the part with a skin graft taken from her own body.

Dr. Bohdan Pomahac, a Brigham and Women’s Hospital surgeon praised the recent medical development. “There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Leading bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania withheld judgment on the Cleveland transplant amid grave concerns on the post-operation results. “The biggest ethical problem is dealing with failure — if your face rejects. It would be a living hell. If your face is falling off and you can’t eat and you can’t breathe and you’re suffering in a terrible manner that can’t be reversed, you need to put on the table assistance in dying. There are patients who can benefit tremendously from this. It’s great that it happened,” he said.

Dr Alex Clarke, of the Royal Free Hospital had praised the Clinic for its contribution to medicine. “It is a real step forward for people who have severe disfigurement and this operation has been done by a team who have really prepared and worked towards this for a number of years. These transplants have proven that the technical difficulties can be overcome and psychologically the patients are doing well. They have all have reacted positively and have begun to do things they were not able to before. All the things people thought were barriers to this kind of operations have been overcome,” she said.

The first partial face transplant surgery on a living human was performed on Isabelle Dinoire on November 27 2005, when she was 38, by Professor Bernard Devauchelle, assisted by Professor Jean-Michel Dubernard in Amiens, France. Her Labrador dog mauled her in May 2005. A triangle of face tissue including the nose and mouth was taken from a brain-dead female donor and grafted onto the patient. Scientists elsewhere have performed scalp and ear transplants. However, the claim is the first for a mouth and nose transplant. Experts say the mouth and nose are the most difficult parts of the face to transplant.

In 2004, the same Cleveland Clinic, became the first institution to approve this surgery and test it on cadavers. In October 2006, surgeon Peter Butler at London‘s Royal Free Hospital in the UK was given permission by the NHS ethics board to carry out a full face transplant. His team will select four adult patients (children cannot be selected due to concerns over consent), with operations being carried out at six month intervals. In March 2008, the treatment of 30-year-old neurofibromatosis victim Pascal Coler of France ended after having received what his doctors call the worlds first successful full face transplant.

Ethical concerns, psychological impact, problems relating to immunosuppression and consequences of technical failure have prevented teams from performing face transplant operations in the past, even though it has been technically possible to carry out such procedures for years.

Mr Iain Hutchison, of Barts and the London Hospital, warned of several problems with face transplants, such as blood vessels in the donated tissue clotting and immunosuppressants failing or increasing the patient’s risk of cancer. He also pointed out ethical issues with the fact that the procedure requires a “beating heart donor”. The transplant is carried out while the donor is brain dead, but still alive by use of a ventilator.

According to Stephen Wigmore, chair of British Transplantation Society’s ethics committee, it is unknown to what extent facial expressions will function in the long term. He said that it is not certain whether a patient could be left worse off in the case of a face transplant failing.

Mr Michael Earley, a member of the Royal College of Surgeon‘s facial transplantation working party, commented that if successful, the transplant would be “a major breakthrough in facial reconstruction” and “a major step forward for the facially disfigured.”

In Wednesday’s conference, Siemionow said “we know that there are so many patients there in their homes where they are hiding from society because they are afraid to walk to the grocery stores, they are afraid to go the the street.” “Our patient was called names and was humiliated. We very much hope that for this very special group of patients there is a hope that someday they will be able to go comfortably from their houses and enjoy the things we take for granted,” she added.

In response to the medical breakthrough, a British medical group led by Royal Free Hospital’s lead surgeon Dr Peter Butler, said they will finish the world’s first full face transplant within a year. “We hope to make an announcement about a full-face operation in the next 12 months. This latest operation shows how facial transplantation can help a particular group of the most severely facially injured people. These are people who would otherwise live a terrible twilight life, shut away from public gaze,” he said.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has warned against a fraudulent email claiming to be from the ATO. The email, which is similar to previous scams, uses the ATO logo and has the subject line of ‘Notification – Please read’, ‘Australian Taxation Office – Please read’ or other variations.

The email directs recipients to a bogus website that looks similar to the ATO website and requests credit card and personal details.

“People should be wary of unsolicited emails claiming to be from the Tax Office,” says Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo.

“As an extra precaution we recommend you type internet addresses directly into your internet browser rather than clicking on links embedded in emails,” added D’Ascenzo who also stated that anyone who receives the email should delete it immediately.

Anyone who believes they may have fallen victim to this scam are urged to contact their credit card provider.

The ATO Says that it does not send any unsolicited emails.

Monday, March 2, 2009

With a Queensland state election coming up in Australia, many minor parties will be looking to hold balance of power and making the major parties listen to what they have to say. The Socialist Alliance (SA) is one of these parties.

SA is a left-wing political party. There stated describes itself as an anti-capitalist party which believes in “a democratic society that is run by and for working people, not the tiny, greedy, destructive elite that now rules.”

It should be noted that SA is not registered for Queensland elections due to what they describe as “restrictive rules for registration.” Their candidates will run as independents. They are, however, registered for federal elections and elections in other states.

Queensland’s unicameral parliament is up for election on March 21. The election campaign will run for a total of 26 days following the issue of the writs by Governor Penelope Wensley.

Wikinews held an exclusive interview with the SA. Answering on behalf of the party was Queensland State Gonvenor Paul Benedek.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

A court in Istanbul has issued an order to block all access to YouTube in Turkey, after a series of insults between Greek and Turkish users of the site escalated. The largest internet provider and privatised state company, Türk Telekom, has put the order into effect, while some smaller internet providers still allow access to the site.

Internet users accessing via Turk Telecom get a message in Turkish saying “Access to this site has been denied by court order! …” and in Turkish and English “Access to www.youtube.com site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2007/384 dated 06.03.2007 of Istanbul First Criminal Peace Court.”

The row between Turkish and Greek YouTube users started when Greek videos claimed that Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish state, and the Turkish people, were homosexual. There were also profanities on the Turkish flag. A Turkish user responded saying that Greece was the birth place of homosexuality. The dispute received a lot of attention in the Turkish media, which they labelled a “virtual war”.

YouTube agreed to take down the offending videos, but nonetheless the prosecutor in Istanbul got a court order, based on charges of insulting Atatürk, which is illegal in Turkey. YouTube responded that it had taken down the videos and was cooperating with the government, adding that “While technology can bring great opportunity and access to information globally, it can also present new and unique cultural challenges.”

Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes insulting Turkishness a crime in Turkey, received a lot of attention because it resulted in the prosecution of intellectuals like Literature Nobel Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk and murdered journalist Hrant Dink.

The European Commission has shown concern over the law article, and Turkey has pledged to revise it. Turkey wants to join the European Union but the negotiations have not been without obstacles so far, for example in the field of freedom of expression.

Monday, December 26, 2005According to the Scotsman newspaper, the directors of the 2012 London Olympics have insisted that the city won the right to host the games “fairly and squarely” after claims were touted by an Israeli official that a “potentially decisive vote was cast in error by an International Olympic Committee (IOC) official”

The Israeli official, Alex Gilady, claims that in the third round of voting, Greek delegate Lambis Nikolaou may have accidentally voted for Paris rather than Madrid, resulting in eliminating Madrid rather than Paris from the final round.

London spokesmen and bid leaders have dismissed the claims as “folklore stories”, “totally irrelevant” and “tittle-tattle”, while the CEO of the Madrid bid told the London Times, “We were very close to winning. We can never know if the Greek vote would have been decisive, but it is lamentable for one human error to have ruined all our hard work.”