Since this Sunday morning, family and friends of the journalist Heriberto Fiorillo are requesting in Barranquilla blood donation type O negative.
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According to sources close to the writer and filmmaker, the blood is needed preventively, since this Monday he will undergo an operation.
Fiorillo, who is director of the Barranquilla International Arts Carnival and columnist for EL TIEMPO, remains “in good health” in the Portoazul cliniclocated on the road that connects the capital of the Atlantic with Puerto Colombia.
In said medical center, they are preparing him for the operation and the donation is part of the clinical protocol.
So you can participate in the donation
People who wish to donate can go to the National Blood Bank, at race 50 No. 80-192on behalf of the patient Heriberto Fiorillo.
“They will give you a certificate that we request to send via WhatsApp to Claudia Muñoz’s cell phone 3156317230, to present it in the Portoazul Clinic laboratory,” a spokesperson reported.
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More details about Heriberto Fiorillo
Last year, the Ministry of Culture awarded Fiorillo the cultural merit medalhighlighting his leadership as a manager and in “recognition of his creativity and narrative ability”.
In addition to creating the La Cueva Foundation, he was the director of three national news programs and is the author of several books. He began his media career at the age of 20. He was also a university professor.
BARRANQUILLA
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After the loss of 96 units of red blood cells belonging to the Fundación Hematológica Colombia that were to be destined for three city clinicsthe mayor of Cali, Jorge Iván Ospina announced a $20 million reward to clear up this situation.
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“This is a vital resource, a lifesaver and therefore the great concern that these units have been lost,” said the Cali president, who asked the Attorney General’s Office to appoint a prosecutor for the investigation to proceed.
The mayor of Cali, Jorge Iván Ospina.
Although the first reports on this event indicated that it was a robbery, Mayor Ospina comments that according to the report he received, it is not clear what happened.
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“It is not necessary that it is a robbery. In the report that I have, it does not indicate that there have been armed men stealing the blood units, that is why the request that a prosecutor take charge and letters in the matter because above all it is about red blood cells aimed at saving lives, “said Ospina Gómez. .
As a doctor, this fact represents a great concern for Mayor Ospina, due to the affectation that red blood cells may have.
“There is a loss of rigor in the chain of custody, the cold chain and the responsibility that the transporter of a blood product like the one that has been lost should have. The loss of these globules is very strange and there will have to be a pertinent clarity in the company responsible for the distribution,” Ospina said.
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The innovative cell therapy with CAR T lymphocytes is achieving, in blood cancers, “potentially cured patients” in cases that no longer had other treatment options. Interview with the president-elect of the Spanish Society of Hematology and Hemotherapy (SEHH), María Victoria Mateos, on World Cancer Day.
The elected president of the Spanish Society of Hematology and Hemotherapy (SEHH), María Victoria Mateos, at the University Hospital of Salamanca. EFE/JM Garcia
Image: SEHH Edition: Nerea Díaz-Maroto
CAR T immunotherapy consists of genetically modifying the patient’s T lymphocytes so that they carry a receptor on their surface that directs them towards malignant cells and, once it binds to them, activates and manages to destroy them.
This cell therapy is one of the latest-generation drugs that is changing the course of the disease by increasing survival in the most common blood cancers: lymphomas, leukemias and myeloma.
It is approved for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (in children and adults) and for some types of lymphoma (such as diffuse large cell non-Hodgkin or mantle lymphoma) and now a drug has just been authorized for relapsed multiple myeloma that has not yet arrived to Spain.
“We have a proportion of patients, 30-40%, that we can consider potentially cured or, at least, long survivors for 5 or 6 years when before they did not have many more treatment options, these are very positive data”, explains the specialist. of the Department of Hematology of the University Clinical Hospital of Salamanca
CAR T cell therapy consists of a single infusion, unlike conventional chemotherapy treatment that requires longer periods of time, and this affects the quality of life of the patient.
This immunotherapy is already positioned “as a standard of treatment to achieve curative strategies” for an increasing number of patients and towards earlier lines for hematological cancers, since in solid tumors they are still in the research phase, he specifies.
According to the expert, after a first implementation of this strategy in a dozen hospitals of the National Health System, “the time for expansion has come” as it has a manageable safety profile, is feasible and has more and more candidate patients.
The challenge of asymptomatic myeloma
María Victoria Mateos is an international benchmark in multiple myeloma, a cancer that affects the plasma cells of the bone marrow that causes bone pain, anemia or kidney failure and is diagnosed, on average, at 65 years of age.
“I think we’re scared to say we cure myeloma patients, but we have them. It has gone from being a disease that did not have more than 2 or 3 years of survival to patients with free disease to progress for more than 9 and 10 years, “says the also head of the Myeloma Unit at the Salamanca Hospital.
As a researcher and coordinator of the Spanish Myeloma Group (GEM), she works on the challenge of detecting this cancer early, in a premalignant stage, and controlling it before it becomes active, which in high-risk cases does so after a few two years.
“And we embarked on that in 2007 with a pioneering clinical trial in the world, we proved that early treatment benefited these patients. It was the starting point for a large number of clinical trials worldwide, ”he highlights.
For this reason, the person also responsible for the Myeloma Unit at the Salamanca Hospital insists on the need to access new therapies where the outlook is “hopeful”.
The elected president of the Spanish Society of Hematology and Hemotherapy (SEHH), María Victoria Mateos, in the Clinical Trials Unit of the Hematology Department that she coordinates at the Clinical Hospital of Salamanca. EFE/JM Garcia
Spain lags behind in access to innovative drugs
These next-generation drugs are the ones that are increasing survival in hematological cancers, third in the general classification of cancer after lung and breast tumors.
In Spain, some 10,000 cases of lymphoma, 6,000 of leukemia and 3,000 of multiple myeloma are diagnosed annually, with a gradual increase in survival thanks also to earlier and more precise diagnoses due to knowledge of molecular markers, targets of therapies.
Dr. María Victoria Mateos, president-elect of the Society of Hematology and coordinator of the Myeloma Unit at the Clinical Hospital of Salamanca. EFE/JMGARCIA
A therapeutic revolution in which Spain is lagging “far behind” because the health authorities do not see the “magnitude of the benefit” of some medicines that, although they are tested in clinical trials in Spanish hospitals, are not authorized or financed so that they arrive to all patients.
“It is very frustrating – he regrets – to work with drugs, with new combinations, that we offer to some patients in clinical trials, that later the regulatory agencies at European level approve, but that in the end you cannot give to the patient”.
If there is no universal access to oncology innovation, “I would dare to say that Spain may no longer be the ideal place to carry out clinical trials”, tests that have an impact on overall survival, warns the coordinator of the Clinical Trials Unit of the Department of Hematology of the Salamanca Hospital.
“Even more so -he points out- with the entry into force of the new regulations for the development of clinical trials where the aim is to speed up and make clinical trials reach the entire European community at the same time. Before it did not happen and Spain was a priority country ».
“The bottleneck is in the Spanish Medicines Agency”, points out the hematologist who understands that, specifically, the coronavirus pandemic will delay the evaluation processes of innovative cancer drugs.
“But now -he assures- it is already unblocking, there are evaluations, the problem is if the result of these evaluations is ‘no financing’ for these drugs”.
And the reason is, according to the hematologist, that “the Ministry of Health does not see the magnitude of the benefit” that, in the specific case of drugs for blood cancers, are changing the course of the disease.
Mateos calls on the Ministry of Health to meet with researchers and doctors and reach a “consensus” that avoids the lack of equity in Spain compared to other European countries.
“I think we have to get our act together and try to force innovation to reach patients,” he insists.
Next October, María Victoria Mateos will assume the presidency of the SEHH with the experience of being a member of the European and American societies of Hematology and member of the Executive Committee of the International Myeloma Society, with more than 150 publications in scientific journals.
Mateos, who will replace Dr. Ramón García Sanz, will be the second woman at the head of this medical society after the hematologist Carmen Burgaleta, who held the presidency from 2011 to 2013.
