Treatment
Known in antiquity to such physicians as Hippocrates and Galen, noma was once reported around the world, including Europe and the United States. With the improvement in hygiene and nutrition, noma has disappeared from industrialized countries since the 20th Century, except during World War II when it was endemic to Auschwitz and Belsen concentration camps. The disease and treatments were studied by Berthold Epstein, a Czech physician and forced-labor prisoner who had recommended the study under Josef Mengele's direction.
The progression of the disease can be halted with the use of antibiotics and improved nutrition; however, its physical effects are permanent and may require reconstructive plastic surgery to repair. Reconstruction is usually very challenging and it should be delayed until full recovery (usually about one year following initial intervention).
Children and other noma survivors in Africa are helped by a few international charitable organizations—such as Facing Africa (a UK registered charity that helps Ethiopian sufferers). There is one dedicated noma hospital in Nigeria, the Noma Children Hospital Sokoto, staffed by resident and visiting medical teams. In other countries, like Ethiopia, international charities work in collaboration with the local health care system to provide complex reconstructive surgery which can give back facial functions such as eating, speaking and smiling. Teams of volunteer medics coming from abroad are often needed to support the local capacity to address the most severe cases, which can be extremely challenging even for senior maxillofacial surgeons. On 10 June 2010 the work of such volunteer surgeons was featured in a UK BBC2 documentary presented by Ben Fogle titled 'Make me a new face - Hope for Africa's hidden children'.
Read more about this topic: Noma (disease)
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460c. 370 B.C.)
“Judge Ginsburgs selection should be a modelchosen on merit and not ideology, despite some naysaying, with little advance publicity. Her treatment could begin to overturn a terrible precedent: that is, that the most terrifying sentence among the accomplished in America has become, Honeythe White House is on the phone.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427347 B.C.)