After the reform of the law creating the National Secretariat for the Disabled (SENADIS), the president dismissed the director of the entity, Manuel Campos, this week. Anibal Miranda will temporarily fill the position until the Cabinet decides on a replacement for Campos. Campos, who was appointed by the administration of Martin Torrijos, is a psychologist by profession, he worked in the private sector as a psychologist and a teacher, and he is the father of a disabled child.

Ramón Alemán, a lawyer who is an expert on juvenile affairs is being mentioned as a possible candidate for this position. On 6 August, the National Assembly approved reforms to Law 23 of June 28, 2007, which created the SENADIS, which say the term in office of the director of the SENADIS will be concurrent with that of the President. The reform to this law was presented by lawmaker Marylín Vallarino. Campos' term was to have expired in 2012.

Last May, at a meeting called "Face to Face" with various civil society organizations, a group of family members of deaf children complained to Ricardo Martinelli about the work of Campos, whom they accused of not attending to their needs. At that moment the President said "you just fired him - government officials who do not provide solutions can not continue working in the government." (Panama America)   

The operation to separate the Panamanian Siamese twins Hannah Yineth and Hannah Yaneth Gill, who are joined at the liver, will not be held in late August as planned, because they have a cold, according to a source at the hospital where they have been admitted. "The girls have colds so the operation was suspended until further notice," said Blanca Peralta, a spokesman for the state Children's Hospital of the Social Security Fund, which will perform the surgery. Hannah Yineth and Hannah Yaneth Gill share the same liver, and therefore the operation, which could last between eight to twelve hours, is necessary for their survival.

The twins, who turned one year old on 10 August, will be operated on by a medical team of 20 doctors, including a surgeon and an anesthesiologist from Argentina, whose names were not disclosed. This is the first operation of its kind conducted in Panama after having recorded two cases of conjoined twins in the years 1989 and 2003, according to medical sources. (Panama America)   

Five private hospitals in Panama City could be forced to pay fines of $50,000 after more than 700 expired products were discovered in their warehouses, emergency rooms, hospitals, intensive care units, and pharmacies. The Consumer Protection Authority in Panama (ACODECO) working together in a joint operation with the Ministry of Health conducted inspections of the Clínica Hospital Río Abajo, Centro Médico Paitilla, Hospital Nacional, Santa Fe and the Clínica Hospital San Fernando, detected 629 expired medicines and another 137 with no expiration data. All of these were immediately seized.

Fines Will Be Applied: According to the explanations given by staff of some of these hospitals were that the drugs were there waiting for the providers to remove them. However the Administrator of ACODECO, Pedro Meilan, said that because these places have endangered the lives of people, especially patients who are looking to improve their health, fines can reach $50,000 dollars. Among the products found were catheters that expired in 2008 and 2009, injectable solutions of an antibiotic called Oxacilina, Lopediar tablets, remedies to stop diarrhea, medical samples of Amlodipina, used in hypertensive patients, aspirin and Paxil, an antidepressant, Ciprofloxacin, used for the respiratory system; Meditap syrup, tablets of Sulital, and ampules of Meti-prednisolone, an anti-inflammatory. (Mi Diario)   

Panama's Health Minister Franklin Vergara said they would be "inflexible" with the pharmacies of five private hospitals that were found to be selling drugs that were either expired or which had no expiration date. Vergara said the pharmacies could be punished with monetary fines starting from $1,000 dollars, all the way up to the closing of the establishment if it is deemed to be a danger to the health of Panamanians. In an operation carried out by the Authority for Consumer Protection and Competition (ACODECO) more than 600 expired medicines were found and there were others with no expiration date. The abnormalities were found in the pharmacies of the Paitilla Medical Center, Clinic Hospital of Rio Abajo, National Hospital, Hospital Santa Fe and the Clinica San Fernando. (Panama America)   

In recent weeks, there have been more than 1,066 cases of seasonal flu reported in Chiriqui. According to Dr. Jose Luis Castillo, the Regional Director of the Ministry of Health in the province, health centers and other medical centers are responding to patients who seek medical care. Dr. Castillo said faced with the increasing numbers of flu cases in the country, they continue a process to vaccinate the entire country, and they keep making making recommendations for prevention measures to keep the virus from spreading. He said it is important for people to use the health centers in their communities to prevent overcrowding in the Emergency Rooms of the polyclinics and hospitals, because these are enabled to offer care for patients with more complicated health problems. In speaking about the death of an 11 year old child in David, who suffered from respiratory complications and multisystem failure, they have sent tissue samples to the Gorgas Memorial Institute in Panama City to determine the cause of death. (La Estrella)

Editor's Comment: I've got this friggin flu right now. Both my 17 year old son and 3 year old daughter got it first (at school, of course), and they gave it to me. It's a pretty bad bug, you feel like crap for about two weeks. I even had a flu shot so whatever was in that didn't cover this particular strain of the influenza virus. Blah... This flu epidemic has been in the news every day for a couple of weeks now. The Emergency Rooms are packed and they keep trying to get the word out to people that if you're just sick with the flu, please don't go to the ER.   

News cases of equine encephalitis keep arriving at the Children's Hospital in Panama City. This was announced by the Ministry of Health yesterday, with the report of a new patient being hospitalized there. A total of 22 patients have been admitted to the Children's Hospital with equine encephalitis. Of those three remain hospitalized, 17 have recovered and have been discharged, one patient has died, and one patient left the hospital without the proper authorization from the doctors or the medical staff (self discharge.) The Ministry of Health reported that of the 22 cases, only four have been confirmed through rigorous laboratory testing by the virologists from the ICG. Similarly, the organization reiterates that it is important for people to remain vigilant, and to watch out for related symptoms such as fever, headache, pains in the bones, irritability in patients under one year of age, vomiting or diarrhea. Anyone showing those symptoms should go to the nearest health facility for medical evaluation. Health fairs in the province of the Darien continue. (El Siglo)   

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - Received the following this morning via email: "Hi, Don. (snip) here. I recently heard from an acquaintance that a local SPA is considering providing stem cell procedure services. The SPA in mention is Alta Vita Spa, located in San Francisco (Calle de El Espiritu Santo, up the street from Keoceramita (sp)). If you decide to look into this, please keep my name outta this. best wishes to you and your family. p."

Sure! Why The Hell Not? Since adult stem cell treatments are apparently totally unregulated in Panama, any whack job with a syringe can jab it into your body and call it a "treatment" - right? Welcome to the Panama-Guide Stem Cell Treatment Facility. Just sign your check, close your eyes, click your heels together three times, and say "there's no place like Nome, there's no place like Nome..." Then bend over, because here it comes again. I'll be RICH - I tell you - RICH! Oh yeah, we will have to hire people to walk around in white coats, find some dude willing to call himself a "Doctor", pay some bribes so that nobody screws with us, and throw up a website. We should be fully operational by, let's say, is 4:00 pm OK with you? We can "treat" whatever ails you - guaranteed. Notice we didn't say "cure" so if it doesn't work, you're screwed (not us.) By the time you get around to figuring that out, you'll already be dead due to your incurable disease, and I'll be spending your hard earned dollars in the Caribbean somewhere. Sounds like a great plan... Who's first?

On A Serious Note: HEY! Health Minister in Panama! Wake The Hell Up!

Copyright 2010 by Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com. Go ahead and use whatever you like as long as you credit the source. Salud.   

Some 400 000 vaccines, for the second phase of the horse vaccination program of the Ministry of Agricultural Development (MIDA) in areas at risk from equine encephalitis, arrived in the country after a seven day delay. Pablo Moreno, the Director of Animal Health at MIDA, said they started distributing the vaccines on Tuesday this week. He said the delivery was delayed because the laboratories produce the vaccines per batch and often customers have to wait, because the production of the vaccines is not easy to do. Vaccines are currently being distributed to the area of 24 de Diciembre and in various sectors of the province of the Darien, where cases of equine encephalitis have been reported. According to Moreno, another batch of 10,000 vaccines will arrive over the next 15 days to cover the remainder of the first and second phases of their plan, where the mission is only to cover the areas at risk of the disease and not the entire country.

Another Child Sick - The Ministry of Health reported yesterday there are 21 confirmed cases equine encephalitis in the country, after confirming a new patient was admitted to the Children's Hospital with suspicious symptoms. According to a press release, the patient is a four year old child from the area of Nuevo Progreso, Yaviza, in the province of Darien. (El Siglo)   

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - Recently I've been trying to learn more about the use of adult stem cells to treat diseases currently considered to be incurable in the Republic of Panama. A few weeks ago health authorities in Costa Rica shut down a clinic that was offering these "treatments" and the same company has an operation here in Panama. The use of adult stem cells to treat anything remains highly controversial - primarily among scientists and doctors who argue among themselves as to whether or not it works - and that controversy spills into Panama with the presence of this company. Hundreds if not thousands of people are paying millions if not billions of dollars every year to travel to places like Panama, Bangkok, and the Dominican Republic to get "treatments" that no other doctor in the world would dare perform. The obvious question is - Do these treatments work or is this quack medicine and are these people being ripped off?

Please Read This Article: Someone posted a link to the following article this morning, which is thus far the most fair and balanced approach I've seen yet: Stem-Cell Tourism: Adventures at the Fringes of Experimental Medicine. I'm still learning more about this and of course there is no "right answer" as the science continues to advance and the technology leads to new discoveries. On a personal note - scam artists simply piss me off. Most of this article is dedicated to one doctor who is performing these procedures in the Dominican Republic. However I'm drawn to the various paragraphs from the other side of the story, which say:

• "The FDA thinks all stem-cell procedures should undergo clinical trials for safety and efficacy before companies begin selling them as therapies. Its formal review process, the agency maintains, is the only way to protect patients from treatments that are ineffective or downright dangerous."

• "But even as glowing testimonials multiply on Regenocyte’s Web site, scientists in high places have slammed the company’s entire approach to medicine. Neurobiologist and stem-cell innovator Hans Keirstead of the University of California at Irvine calls commercial stem-cell clinics like Regenocyte “deplorable.” “It’s absolutely terrible. They’re taking advantage of people’s need,” he says. And last year, Irving Weissman, head of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), bashed Regenocyte on CNN. “There is no such cell as a regenocyte,” he told a reporter. (Grekos admits as much, explaining that “regenocyte” is not a technical classification but a marketing term his company developed.) “I am disappointed and shocked that somebody would prey on a family that has an untreatable disease,” Weissman said. When presented with the Thai trial in which patients’ ejection fraction improved by approximately 20 percent, Weissman withheld comment on the grounds that the ISSCR has not had a chance to review the paper, but he points out that no regulatory body oversaw the study."

• "Robert Lanza, the chief scientific officer of U.S. cell-therapy firm Advanced Cell Technology, is equally skeptical of the scientific strength of the Thai trial. “This was a safety—Phase I—trial, so the results don’t really tell us much about the potential efficacy of the cells,” he says."

• “There may have been some improvement. However, it’s impossible to reach any conclusion, since the study wasn’t randomized and there was no control group. The study was further compromised by the fact that the cardiologists evaluating the patients were not ‘blinded.’ The slight improvements reported in this paper could easily be the result of a placebo effect.”

• "Reading further, Grekos was impressed. In the U.S., autologous-stem-cell treatments other than bone-marrow transplants are only in early-stage clinical trials, and there’s still no definitive proof that they work. Embryonic stem cells, which are thought to be more versatile than adult stem cells because they can give rise to any tissue type in the body, are even less proven. The only embryonic-stem-cell trial announced in the U.S. to date, by the California company Geron, and designed to assess the cells’ therapeutic potential in acute spinal-cord-injury patients, has been repeatedly postponed partly because of regulators’ concerns about the safety of the cells."

Warning - Proceed At Your Own Risk: Who the hell am I to judge? The patients in the article are fully grown adults who are going into these procedures fully informed as to the risks, and the possibility that they just might be throwing their money away. However, what if you have the money and are dying of an incurable disease anyway? What good is the money going to do if you're dead? That's the choice these people are facing. So, is it quackery or cutting edge science? "Galileo, perhaps more than any other single person, was responsible for the birth of modern science." He was also tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant his scientific publications, convicted as a heretic, and sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of this life. I only hope the desperate people who are faced with these life and death decisions with regards to adult stem cell "treatments" and "therapies" do so with their eyes wide open, fully informed, and prepared to live with the consequences of their decisions, whatever they may be. These "treatments" are happening here in Panama so it's a relevant topic of discussion for this website. More to come, still working...

Copyright 2010 by Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com. Go ahead and use whatever you like as long as you credit the source. Salud.   

By DON WINNER for Panama-Guide.com - The entire stem cell issue continues to generate interest. Here in Panama there is a facility supposedly "treating" patients using adult stem cells. A similar facility, owned by the same people, was recently shut down in Costa Rica. As I slowly learn more about stem cells and their use in medicine, a couple of things become blazingly obvious. First of all, there is great promise in what the future might hold with regards to the development of science and the use of stem cells. However, it is also equally obvious that right now the science is in its infancy. There are a few unique and specific areas where testing has led to clinical trials, under strict scientific controls and with the appropriate oversight, being conducted by responsible professionals. However, as in any new or emerging science, there are others who seem to be taking advantage of the desperation and needs of people, who claim to be able to "treat" things like paralyzation due to spinal cord injury, type II diabetes, or multiple sclerosis using adult stem cells, right now. I have a news flash for you. If these treatments actually worked, then every doctor on the planet would rush to Panama. There would be scholarly articles published in medical journals. In short, if would be accepted as the gold standard. However, that is not the case today. It might be, at some time in the future, however in my humble estimation anyone who claims they can use adult stem cells to "treat" these conditions in Panama is a charlatan - "A charlatan (also called swindler or mountebank) is a person practicing quackery or some similar confidence trick in order to obtain money, fame or other advantages via some form of pretence or deception." Confidence trick. Quackery. Deception. Yeah, that's what I think is going on here. And, I don't like it one bit. I'm also convinced these people are operating within the law in Panama - therefore, they are most likely not doing anything illegal. Immoral maybe, but probably not illegal. Once again, this is my personal opinion - I am entitled to mine, and you are entitled to yours - and you are free to disagree with me if you so choose. Here's an email I received this morning on this issue;

• "Don,

• Stem cell research is in it's infancy! There are lots of promising things just recently "discovered" by researchers here i the US. Some are intriguing to say the least. One in particular is the development of corneas and regeneration of eye cells. One patient who lost his vision over 50 years ago was treated and for the first time in 50 years was diagnosed with 20/20 vision. There are many credible sources for research and funding. Many state and private universities are now playing the game and coming up with incredible findings.

• The moral issue has been one of the religious right versus academia and science. I will not get into the rights or wrongs of the politics of same. I will say that the research has been more than promising. For me it is personal. I have a liver and pancreas that are failing. I am told by good reliable doctors here at the University of Washington that the work being done right now may have an impact on my lving for another 30 years or so. This would be a gift from heaven. As I have not expected to live past 70! that is only a few years awy for me. So, needless to say as a very selfish person, I am hoping that there is more research and more discoveries every day. I do have concerns over what I have read about the clinic in Costa Rica and it's operators. They sound like dangerous people and the kind that (as you indicate) are preying on the suffering of the not so lucky , and not so informed.

• Good luck on your story! William"

And Good Luck On Your Story, William: I hope for the very best for you, William, and I pray that eventually medicine and science, either through stem cell research or any other avenue, will find new ways to help you live a long and happy life. I also hope that people are smart enough to educate themselves and to make smart choices - even in life and death situations of desperation. I spoke to one of the primary people involved in the clinic here in Panama that's providing stem cell "treatments" and he told me they have five patients with spinal cord injuries who were paralyzed who are now walking. I would love to interview those individuals. All five of them. Because you know, when I search the Internet looking for documented cases where stem cell treatments have cured spinal cord injuries I just can't find them, and I would like to be the first to document those cases for the public. Still working on these issues, more to come. Please keep those emails coming. I've got a lot to learn, and this whole issue isn't going anywhere...

Copyright 2010 by Don Winner for Panama-Guide.com. Go ahead and use whatever you like as long as you credit the source. Salud.