The Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) advises that Grand Bahama Health Services (GBHS) has responded to the Grand Cay boat incident.

At present, sixteen (16) patients have been identified including three (3) pediatric patients. Five(5) patients have been admitted to the Rand Memorial Hospital (RMH).

Consultant Specialists will review these patients and update relatives going forward.

Any further inquiries regarding this incident should be directed to the Royal Bahamas PoliceForce.

The Public Hospitals Authority (PHA) advises that Grand Bahama Health Services (GBHS) has responded to the Grand Cay boat incident. At present, sixteen (16) patients have been identified including three (3) pediatric patients. Five (5) patients have been admitted to the Rand Memorial Hospital (RMH). Consultant Specialists will review these patients and update relatives going forward. Any further inquiries regarding this incident should be directed to the Royal Bahamas Police Force.

The Minister of Health & Wellness, Hon. Dr. Michael Darville, attended the PHA Academy’s launch of its Trained Clinical Nurse Certificate Programme at the School of Nursing campus, on Grosvernor’s Close this past Monday. The Public Hospitals Authority also used the occasion to commission three (3) new ambulances into the National Emergency Medical Services fleet of emergency vehicles.

The new TCN class totals thirty-six (36) students descending from multiple islands across ourarchipelago, including New Providence, Grand Bahama, Andros, Abaco, Long Island, and as faras Mayaguana. In his remarks to the student nurses, Minister Darville outlined that initial humanresource surveys indicated that The Bahamas is experiencing a shortage of 173-180 specialtynurses and also approximately 450 nurses. Minister Darville announced the recruitment ofnurses from Ghana and the Philippines as a short-term measure to strengthen nursingservices. The fully accredited TCN Program, and the other programs that will follow, will addresslong term issues with respect to nursing shortages.

Minister Darville highlighted the enrollment of four (4) male students among the class of TCN.

The new ambulances commissioned during the event are part of a wider procurementexercise of emergency vehicles to strengthen the ambulance fleet in New Providence andGrand Bahama, and to also implement a new ground transportation system throughout theFamily Islands to ensure every Island has access to EMS responders in a fully equippedambulance.

PHA Managing Director, Dr. Aubynette Rolle and PHA Chairman, Andrew Edwards,accompanied the Minister of a tour of the refurbished School of Nursing which will continue toserve as a site for training and instruction for the University of The Bahamas School of Nursingand the PHA Academy.

The Minister of Health & Wellness, Hon. Dr. Michael Darville, attended the PHA Academy’s launch of its Trained Clinical Nurse Certificate Programme at the School of Nursing campus, on Grosvernor’s Close this past Monday. The Public Hospitals Authority also used the occasion to commission three (3) new ambulances into the National Emergency Medical Services fleet of emergency vehicles. The new TCN class totals thirty-six (36) students descending from multiple islands across our archipelago, including New Providence, Grand Bahama, Andros, Abaco, Long Island, and as far as Mayaguana. In his remarks to the student nurses, Minister Darville outlined that initial human resource surveys indicated that The Bahamas is experiencing a shortage of 173-180 specialty nurses and also approximately 450 nurses. Minister Darville announced the recruitment of nurses from Ghana and the Philippines as a short-term measure to strengthen nursing services. The fully accredited TCN Program, and the other programs that will follow, will address long term issues with respect to nursing shortages. Minister Darville highlighted the enrollment of four (4) male students among the class of TCN. The new ambulances commissioned during the event are part of a wider procurement exercise of emergency vehicles to strengthen the ambulance fleet in New Providence and Grand Bahama, and to also implement a new ground transportation system throughout the Family Islands to ensure every Island has access to EMS responders in a fully equipped ambulance. PHA Managing Director, Dr. Aubynette Rolle and PHA Chairman, Andrew Edwards, accompanied the Minister of a tour of the refurbished School of Nursing which will continue to serve as a site for training and instruction for the University of The Bahamas School of Nursing and the PHA Academy.

Some Bahamians may have recently contracted dengue fever and not realized it because they had little to no symptoms, according to Minister of Health Dr. Michael Darville.

Individuals who contracted dengue fever in 2011, when serotypes 1 and 2 were common, and contract those same serotypes this time around, may have the immunological profile to fend off any serious or even noticeable sickness.

Darville made the comments about the viral infection as he clarified that serotype 3 of dengue fever, which appears to be spreading most prominently, is not more harmful than 1 and 2.

"If you've been exposed to type 1 and type 2, and you are exposed to type 3, the possibility of the reaction being more severe is the case," Darville explained.

"The majority of cases that we found in New Providence, at this particular time, is type 3. We believe from the last dengue outbreak in The Bahamas of any severe proportion in 2011, the serotypes were 1 and 2.

"So if there's an immunological profile in the country, it is from 1 and 2, which means there could have been some people exposed to dengue with 1 or 2 and had very mild symptoms and didn't know you had dengue.

"And then there are some who are exposed and have severe forms of the manifestation of dengue.

"The reality is if you've been exposed to 1 and 2 and you are exposed to 3, the possibility of you having a more severe reaction exists, but it is not that type 3 is more severe than type 1 and 2."

Darville said there are 52 cases in The Bahamas, with the cases confined to New Providence and Grand Bahama.

Health officials said there were over 200 confirmed cases in 2011 and more than 7,000 suspected cases.

Symptoms of dengue include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, rash, aches, and pains such as eye pain, muscle, bone and joint pain.

"We are concerned about any rise in cases," Darville said.

"We've been looking at the demographic associated with a new increase. Over the weekend, we had an additional 19 or 20 cases added to the 30 cases that we had before.

"We are once again telling the Bahamian people to look at your surroundings, ensure that you don't have any buckets of water lying around that can cause growth of the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

"We upped our fogging but of course, fogging only knocks what's airborne, and if you have these receptacles filled with water around the home you continue to breed.

"That is the concern. So the Department of Environmental Health is working very closely with the ministry to really get the message out, and to be very aggressive with the cases that we do find and the residents where we go in and we do a spot check and fix the situation surrounding."

Six people were hospitalized with dengue fever at last report.

"It's very important to us to let the population know that the dengue can be very serious and it's important to once again execute the appropriate measure," Darville said.

"Also, this week, we found cases in Grand Bahama. And so, I believe we have three confirmed cases in Grand Bahama with the possibility of an admission ... or maybe two.

"We are upping our investigation and fogging as well as going from door to door with those cases that we do find to ensure that the environment is protected so there is no increased breeding."

A first-in-human trial of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for post-stroke rehabilitation patients by Cleveland Clinic researchers has shown that using DBS to target the dentate nucleus – which regulates fine-control of voluntary movements, cognition, language, and sensory functions in the brain – is safe and feasible. 

The EDEN trial (Electrical Stimulation of the Dentate Nucleus for Upper Extremity Hemiparesis Due to Ischemic Stroke) also shows that the majority of participants (nine out of 12) demonstrated improvements in both motor impairment and function. Importantly, the study found that participants with at least minimal preservation of distal motor function at enrollment showed gains that almost tripled their initial scores. 

Published in Nature Medicine, these findings build on more than a decade of preclinical work led by principal investigators Andre Machado, M.D., Ph.D., and Kenneth Baker, Ph.D., at Cleveland Clinic. 

“These are reassuring for patients as the participants in the study had been disabled for more than a year and, in some cases, three years after stroke. This gives us a potential opportunity for much needed improvements in rehabilitation in the chronic phases of stroke recovery,” said Dr. Machado, chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Neurological Institute. “The quality-of-life implications for study participants who responded to therapy have been significant.” 

Dr. Machado patented the DBS method in stroke recovery. Boston Scientific owns a license to those patents and provided the Vercise DBS systems used in the trial. In 2010, Cleveland Clinic Innovations established Enspire DBS Therapy, Inc., a Cleveland Clinic portfolio company and is commercializing technology developed at Cleveland Clinic to commercialize the method and it co-funded the study. Dr. Machado holds stock options and equity ownership rights with Enspire and serves as the chief scientific officer. 

“We saw patients in the study regain levels of function and independence they did not have before enrolling in the research,” Dr. Machado said. “This was a smaller study and we look forward to expanding as we have begun the next phase.” 

The completed EDEN trial enrolled 12 individuals with chronic, moderate-to-severe hemiparesis of the upper extremity as a result of a unilateral middle cerebral artery stroke 12-to-36 months prior. There were no major complications throughout the study. Nine of the 12 participants improved to a degree that is considered meaningful in stroke rehabilitation. 

Each participant underwent DBS surgery, which involved the surgical implantation of electrodes into a part of the brain called the cerebellum. Once connected to a pace-maker-like device, the electrodes were used to deliver small electric pulses to help people recover control of their movements. Following discharge and recovery from the surgery, participants completed months of physical therapy, first with the DBS device turned off for several weeks and then turned on for four-to-eight months. It was after turning the device on that the most significant improvements were observed.  

“The safety and feasibility data from this early study combined with the potential symptom improvements certainly support the need for additional, larger trials to see if cerebellar DBS is indeed a potential treatment for post-stroke motor impairment,” said Brooks Gross, Ph.D., program director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. 

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disabilities. Approximately 800,000 people in the United States alone suffer strokes every year. While the majority of patients will survive the acute phase, persistent neurological issues likely will jeopardize quality of life and productivity, with approximately 50% of survivors still exhibiting disability severities that require assistance with daily activities. 

“There are currently no effective methods to improve the outcomes of physical rehabilitation for the hundreds of thousands of stroke survivors,” said Dr. Baker, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. “The results of the study found that deep brain stimulation, paired with physical therapy, improved movement in patients who were more than a year out from their stroke and whose motor improvements had largely plateaued. This tells us the research warrants further investigation in larger patient samples.” 

Research reported in this press release was supported by the NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative®, under award number UH3NS100543. The study was also supported by Enspire DBS Therapy, Inc. 

A first-in-human trial of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for post-stroke rehabilitation patients by Cleveland Clinic researchers has shown that using DBS to target the dentate nucleus – which regulates fine-control of voluntary movements, cognition, language, and sensory functions in the brain – is safe and feasible.  The EDEN trial (Electrical Stimulation of the Dentate Nucleus for Upper Extremity Hemiparesis Due to Ischemic Stroke) also shows that the majority of participants (nine out of 12) demonstrated improvements in both motor impairment and function. Importantly, the study found that participants with at least minimal preservation of distal motor function at enrollment showed gains that almost tripled their initial scores.  Published in Nature Medicine, these findings build on more than a decade of preclinical work led by principal investigators Andre Machado, M.D., Ph.D., and Kenneth Baker, Ph.D., at Cleveland Clinic.  “These are reassuring for patients as the participants in the study had been disabled for more than a year and, in some cases, three years after stroke. This gives us a potential opportunity for much needed improvements in rehabilitation in the chronic phases of stroke recovery,” said Dr. Machado, chair of Cleveland Clinic’s Neurological Institute. “The quality-of-life implications for study participants who responded to therapy have been significant.”  Dr. Machado patented the DBS method in stroke recovery. Boston Scientific owns a license to those patents and provided the Vercise DBS systems used in the trial. In 2010, Cleveland Clinic Innovations established Enspire DBS Therapy, Inc., a Cleveland Clinic portfolio company and is commercializing technology developed at Cleveland Clinic to commercialize the method and it co-funded the study. Dr. Machado holds stock options and equity ownership rights with Enspire and serves as the chief scientific officer.  “We saw patients in the study regain levels of function and independence they did not have before enrolling in the research,” Dr. Machado said. “This was a smaller study and we look forward to expanding as we have begun the next phase.”  The completed EDEN trial enrolled 12 individuals with chronic, moderate-to-severe hemiparesis of the upper extremity as a result of a unilateral middle cerebral artery stroke 12-to-36 months prior. There were no major complications throughout the study. Nine of the 12 participants improved to a degree that is considered meaningful in stroke rehabilitation.  Each participant underwent DBS surgery, which involved the surgical implantation of electrodes into a part of the brain called the cerebellum. Once connected to a pace-maker-like device, the electrodes were used to deliver small electric pulses to help people recover control of their movements. Following discharge and recovery from the surgery, participants completed months of physical therapy, first with the DBS device turned off for several weeks and then turned on for four-to-eight months. It was after turning the device on that the most significant improvements were observed.   “The safety and feasibility data from this early study combined with the potential symptom improvements certainly support the need for additional, larger trials to see if cerebellar DBS is indeed a potential treatment for post-stroke motor impairment,” said Brooks Gross, Ph.D., program director, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.  Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disabilities. Approximately 800,000 people in the United States alone suffer strokes every year. While the majority of patients will survive the acute phase, persistent neurological issues likely will jeopardize quality of life and productivity, with approximately 50% of survivors still exhibiting disability severities that require assistance with daily activities.  “There are currently no effective methods to improve the outcomes of physical rehabilitation for the hundreds of thousands of stroke survivors,” said Dr. Baker, Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. “The results of the study found that deep brain stimulation, paired with physical therapy, improved movement in patients who were more than a year out from their stroke and whose motor improvements had largely plateaued. This tells us the research warrants further investigation in larger patient samples.”  Research reported in this press release was supported by the NIH Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies® Initiative, or The BRAIN Initiative®, under award number UH3NS100543. The study was also supported by Enspire DBS Therapy, Inc.