Today is International Women’s Day, and this year’s theme is ‘Choose to Challenge’. The IWD website states, ‘A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change’.
I wanted to write about this challenge, of achieving gender parity, calling out bias, and finally reaching equality.
Coagulation and COVID-19 – Part 1
The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has caused immense human and economic suffering. It has also inspired some remarkable scientific and medical achievements. We have seen the development and rollout of an effective vaccine in record time, and the RECOVERY trial, with its adaptive design and simplified procedures, is an innovative approach to rapid yet rigorous testing of potential COVID-19 treatments.
Migraine, whether episodic or chronic, is a complex condition characterised by a wide spectrum of symptoms – from hypersensitivity, nausea and sickness to visual disturbances, loss of concentration and vertigo.
The pandemic has meant that we, as a company, haven’t flown anywhere for a year. The result has been a substantial reduction of our carbon footprint, one that we hope to use as a “kick start” to keep further reducing our carbon impact post-pandemic.
The damage caused to neurons during Multiple Sclerosis (MS) relapses makes the disease difficult to manage. Inflammatory stages of MS are treated using corticosteroids and disease modifying therapies (DMTs) (1). This relapsing remitting stage of MS also extends to the beginning stages of progressive MS which ultimately results in neurodegenerative symptoms caused by the deterioration of neurons (2,3).
Half the UK population are unable to name one famous woman scientist, according to a report from education charity Teach First. How many can you name? Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace – that’s my lot. My teenage daughters weren’t much better: ‘Marie Curie and the woman who worked on DNA that no one remembers’ (Rosalind Franklin!).
The jury is still out on the world vision of office working once the pandemic restrictions subside. Twitter have announced that their employees can work from home ‘forever’, whereas the view from Netflix is that homeworking is ‘a pure negative’.1
But, unlike AS&K, these big corporations have completely different considerations. We are being guided by listening to the needs of our staff.
On Christmas Day I received an email. It was addressed to my 7-year-old son, and it told him that his coronavirus test was positive.
There were mixed emotions. I was amused at the thought of this strange Christmas present. I was also relieved – ever since his school had closed a day early the previous week because a teacher had tested positive we’d been living with uncertainty. Although a little scary, the knowledge we now had was reassuring.