Speaker: Professor Alan Salama

Prof Alan Salama is a Consultant in Nephrology and director of the UCL Department of Renal Medicine, at the UCL Faculty of Medical Sciences. He specializes in immunological kidney diseases, with expertise in vasculitis, autoimmunity and transplantation. Alan trained in Oxford and in London at The London Hospital, Guy’s Hospital and The Hammersmith Hospital, completing a PhD at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School and a post-doctoral period at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Alan will discuss the impact COVID19 had on the kidneys of those patients without previous kidney disease, on those on dialysis, and with transplants; and outline the preparations needed for Part 2.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Prof Ora Paltiel

Senior Physician, Dept. of Hematology, Hadassah Ein Karem; Professor of Epidemiology and Director Hadassah Research Centre in Clinical Epidemiology; former Director, Braun School of Public Health, Hadassah-Hebrew University.

Prof Paltiel (Medicine and Epidemiology, McGill University, Canada) combines haematology research and clinical work with studies of lymphoma genetic, viral and environmental risk factors among Israelis and Palestinians. She is a co-investigator in the Jerusalem Perinatal Cohort study; a member of the Directorate of Israel’s Quality Indicators Program in Community Healthcare; and directed the International Master’s Programme in Public Health.

International comparisons are constantly raised in discussions about the Covid 19 pandemic.   After apparently coping with an earlier outbreak, in the past month Israel has been severely affected. One of the most frequent questions about the pandemic is about the role of children and how they influence the pattern of disease. Prof Paltiel will discuss the Israeli Covid-19 response, focusing on the role of children in particular.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Speaker: Dr Daniel Staetsky, Senior Research Fellow; Director of the European Jewish Demography Unit, Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR)

Dr Daniel Staetsky (MA Demography, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; PhD Social Statistics, Southampton), specialises in Jewish, European, Israeli and Middle Eastern demography. He focuses particularly on major puzzles of contemporary demography, of which Jewish longevity is one.

There is elevated Jewish mortality from COVID-19 in England and Wales.  Clarifying why is vital, and has serious policy consequences. British BAME have well-documented ill health and vulnerability, but Jews are “long-lifers” making Jewish COVID-19 data rather incomprehensible. Do Jews resemble BAME with respect to the underlying vulnerability and this has been overlooked previously, or is Covid-19 an aberration? Does this relate to a particular Jewish subgroup (eg haredi)? Dr Staetsky will discuss possible reasons for the elevated Jewish mortality, and outline useful directions to be explored further.

You can watch a recording of the webinar here.

Speaker: Dr Mike Groszmann

Consultant and Clinical Lead, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, UCLH and UCL Medical School

Joint Honours, Psychology / Neurosciences (Manchester) and Medicine graduate (Imperial College, London). Psychiatry training at the Royal Free and the Tavistock Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Higher Training Programme (including various psychotherapy models). Special interests in Adolescence, Neuropsychiatry, Psycho-Oncology, Paediatric Liaison and Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy.

Lead Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist managing acute psychiatric admissions to the only North Central London general paediatric ward operational during lockdown, based at Great Ormond Street Hospital. I will share observations, experiences and trends about the pandemic impact on children and young people, relating to mental health requiring medical care; and how services had to reconfigure to maintain safety and meet clinical need

You can watch a recording of the event here. 

Speaker: Prof Marcel Levi

Prof Levi is Chief Executive of University College London Hospital (UCLH) and Professor of Medicine at UCL.

Prof Levi studied medicine, specialised and completed his PhD in Amsterdam, and is a Fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Science. He worked at the University of Perugia, Italy and the Center for Transgene Technology and Genetherapy, University of Leuven, Belgium. His specific interests are haemostasis and thrombosis, vascular medicine, and angio-edema. He published over 700 articles, received several international research awards, and elected FRCP. He was Dean, University of Amsterdam Faculty of Medicine and Chair, Executive Board, Amsterdam Academic Medical Centre, before moving to UCL in 2017.

CE Prof Levi and colleagues published a review “Coagulation abnormalities and thrombosis in patients with COVID-19” (11/05/2020, Lancet Haematology 7: e438-40).

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Tuesday 30^th June: 20:00

Dr Karyn Moshal is a consultant in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust, and Sepsis Lead for the Hospital.

Dr Moshal graduated from the University of Cape Town, trained in General Paediatrics in London (UCL and Imperial affiliated hospitals) and completed a Fellowship in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at the Children’s Hospital, Philadelphia. In 2004 she founded the NGO CHIVA Africa, in response to the HIV pandemic and the crisis in South Africa. She remains Chairman of both the South African and UK Trustees. This organization has trained and mentored more than 20,000 health care professionals – responsible for the care of hundreds of thousands of children – in the provision of quality HIV treatment and long-term management, giving them the practical skills to save lives and improve the quality of life of these young people.   She received Rotary International’s Paul Harris Award, the CHIVAS Humanitarian Award (South Africa) and the South African Achiever Award in the Health Care sector for this work.

Hallucinations, ICU and Recovery of a Covid Patient

Speaker: Laurie Wiseman

Laurie Wiseman was a patient at the Royal Free Hospital for 26 days. He was admitted the day before lockdown in March, diagnosed with Covid 19, spent five days on a ventilator and 12 days in ICU.  He was discharged on 16th April.

61 year-old Laurie has a particular perspective on his experience.  He has been involved in digital health for the past 30 years.  He founded Primal Pictures, creators of the world’s first complete 3D computer graphic model of human anatomy for medical education. and remains at the forefront of digital transformation in healthcare.  How does he view the patient experience?

You can watch a recording of the event here.

The story of COVID-19 and a ‘new’ CPAP respiratory support device

Prof Mervyn Singer is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at UCL, an emeritus NIHR Senior Investigator, co-editor of the Oxford Textbook of Critical Care, was co-chair of the “Sepsis-3’ international consensus group that redefined sepsis,  and is current Chair of the International Sepsis Forum. He will talk about the engineering of the continuous positive airways pressure (CPAP) device – 10,000 were produced in four weeks.

You can watch a recording of the event here.

Alternative strategies to maintain suppression of Covid-19 transmission in the UK

Speaker: Dr Ellis Friedman [Director of Public Health (retired), expert COVID-19 advisor to the British Medical Association and Treasurer of the Faculty of Public Health]

On June 9, the UK had the worst public perception of handling of the pandemic across a wide range of nations. Is this perception justified?

You can watch a recording of the event here.