Preview Newsletter
Ethicon Media Monitoring 12/27/2017
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Surgeons admit there is serious under-reporting of mesh complications as a new survey outlines the devastating risks of a “quick fix” operation
Dec 24, 2017 | Cambs Times
By Kath Sansom
In a damning You Tube video of a surgeon conference, medics are heard saying they are too busy to report, can’t work out new IT systems and evidence is low quality. -
More than ten women to sue the HSE in 2018 over vaginal mesh implants
Dec 23, 2017 | TheJournal.ie
MORE THAN 30 women are expected to launch legal action in 2018 because of complications suffered after vaginal mesh procedures, with ten of these cases to be taken against the HSE. -
University professor to chair mesh implants group
Dec 24, 2017 | Aberdeen Evening Express
Lorna McKee has been selected to review the use of transvaginal tapes and meshes by NHS Scotland. -
Review of the year: the female groundbreakers of 2017
Dec 26, 2017 | The Independent
By Harriet Marsden
The Merriam-Webster dictionary has chosen “feminism” as its word of the year, and it has certainly been an extraordinary 12 months for women. -
The post-pregnancy belly problem that nobody tells women about
Dec 22, 2017 | Vox
By Allison Yarrow
After Jenna Angst gave birth to her second child, she noticed that her midsection didn’t look right. “I was frustrated that my stomach looked so pudgy, even after I got back to my normal weight,” Angst, 37, says
Client Attorney Privileged/Attorney Work Product/At Request of Counsel
Online Sources
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Dec 24, 2017 | Cambs Times
By Kath Sansom
In a damning You Tube video of a surgeon conference, medics are heard saying they are too busy to report, can’t work out new IT systems and evidence is low quality.
Some hospitals have recorded nothing at all, while one consultant asked why they had to log data.
Another said that with the number of mesh cases coming to court, there will be a few “nervous” gynaecologists who haven’t recorded any evidence to back up their work.
The You Tube video shows that behind the scenes, surgeon societies know that mesh safety evidence is low quality and short term.
Meanwhile, women across the UK are suffering life changing pain and loss of sex lives and surgeons continue to implant the plastic devices in a bid to get the long term evidence they need.
Campaigners say this continues to use women as human guinea pigs, despite patient safety groups globally testifying to the scale of personal tragedy.
Many are forced to adjust to new normals having walked into what they were assured was a simple operation with minimal risks.
A survey of 570 members on campaign group, Sling The Mesh, shows the devastation of previously healthy women, offered a quick fix to an embarrassing problem of prolapse or incontinence, often caused by childbirth.
Now, they are left with problems including:
• Eight out of 10 suffer pain when walking.
• Eight out of ten report pain when sitting.
• Seven out of ten have lost sex lives.
• One in three struggle to go to urinate and have to self catheterise.
• More than half suffer nerve damage.
• One in three suffer erosion. This is where mesh slices into tissues, nerves, and organ like the bladder or bowel or through vaginal walls.
• Six out of 10 suffer depression and anxiety.
• More than half suffer ongoing cystitis. Urinary tract infections (UTI) need antibiotics to treat it. Over time, women are becoming antibiotic resistant, which poses a dangerous sepsis risk.
• Fourteen women are down to their last antibiotic that works, a further 14 are down to their final two. Once those stop, any future infections must be treated with high dose medication, on a drip in hospital.
• A third of women have had to give up work, while one in five are on reduced hours to cope.
• Seven out of ten say it has impacted their ability to enjoy hobbies and socialise with family and friends.
The NHS, MHRA and Government officials say the plastic mesh implants are a safe and effective treatment option, used in the right patient and inserted by the right surgeon.
UK health advisory body, NICE, this month said vaginal prolapse mesh should stop.
However, surgeon societies say it is still a safe option to treat incontinence providing women are told of the risks.
Sling The Mesh campaigners say complications are just as severe, whether it is a mesh patch to fix prolapse or a tape mesh sling to treat incontinence.
The survey shows that the incontinence operation is the most commonly performed. Statistics show:
• 70 per cent of women had an incontinence mesh tape.
• 20 per cent had a mesh patch to treat prolapse.
• 10 per cent had a mesh patch to treat a hernia.
In a conference earlier this year BAUS (British Association of Urology Surgeons) are heard criticising colleagues who are members of another society, BSUG (British Society of Urology Gynaecologists), about their poor data collection.
Chris Harding, urologist at Newcastle Hospital, says: “When you look at the response rate on the BSUG there’ll be a few nervous gynaecologists with all of the tape cases coming to court - where can they demonstrate that they contribute to national audit?”
Mr Harding adds there is: “A significant risk of bias” in reporting as it relies on surgeons to enter all their data in an accurate way and “it’s easy to lose the odd case.”
“This is not high level evidence,” he said. “There are some surgeons or units that don’t enter any data.”
Less then four out of ten surgeons report to the BSUG database, the largest system used to look at the number of women suffering mesh problems.
One surgeon asks what is the point of reporting while another commented there is currently only three months follow up of women and it needs to be done at one, five and 10 years.
Campaign groups globally say mesh is like a ticking time bomb as problems may not cut in until years later.
Mr Harding said that when the NHS English Mesh Review was carried out everybody went to look for long term data - but couldn’t find any.
Surgeon Roland Morley concludes: “The NHS Review will say we want long term follow up, we’ve got to push NHS England to pay for that.”
• Watch the 20 minute discussion here on You Tube BAUS Urological Challenges 2017. Watch from 1:23:2.
• Read the Sling The Mesh survey here.
http://www.cambstimes.co.uk/news/surgeons-admit-to-serious-under-reporting-of-mesh-complications-as-a-new-survey-outlines-the-devastating-risks-of-a-quick-fix-operation-1-5333061
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More than ten women to sue the HSE in 2018 over vaginal mesh implants
Dec 23, 2017 | TheJournal.ie
MORE THAN 30 women are expected to launch legal action in 2018 because of complications suffered after vaginal mesh procedures, with ten of these cases to be taken against the HSE.
The other 20 are private patients expected to take action against their consultants.
Thousands of women across the UK, US and Australia are suing their public health services and manufacturers after experiencing issues such as chronic pain and infections following their operations.
Transvaginal mesh devices are used in surgeries to treat two conditions women can develop following natural childbirth: stress urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse.
These procedures have been carried out on women in Ireland since the late 90s and are still performed today, despite the fact that one of the procedures has been effectively banned in Australia and the UK in recent weeks.
Health Minister Simon Harris recently asked the Chief Medical Officer to compile a report on the use of transvaginal mesh implants in Ireland, after complications suffered by a number of Irish women were highlighted by TheJournal.ie.
Now we can reveal that at least 30 women will launch legal action in 2018 – ten of these will involve HSE patients and the other 20 were private patients.
Solicitor Melanie Power, who said she has been contacted by upwards of 50 women about vaginal mesh surgeries, is representing 30 who will be lodging papers in the new year.
Although she is pursuing medical negligence cases, Power is also looking at the possibility of suing the manufacturers of some of these devices.
“The ladies in the UK have the benefit of being able to do a class action – here we’d have to do it individually. It’s a lot more difficult and time-consuming.”
“More people are coming forward every day, it’s very sad,” she said.
‘A small number of reports’
Documents released to TheJournal.ie under the Freedom of Information Act indicate two patients have already commenced action against the HSE.
In correspondence between the Department of Health and the State Claims Agency in November this year, a department official was told that there is “evidence of incidents being reported as a result of side effectsto the procedure, but not many directly related to the device itself”.
The State Claims Agency’s head of data services also said there were two “incidents” in 2017.
Another email from Ciarán Breen, director of the agency, confirmed this as he stated that the agency has “two claims relating to TVIs (transvaginal implants)”. He added that both were “at an early stage”.
Emails between the department and the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) reveal that, according to the authority’s figures, “over the last number of years, approximately 3,000 mesh devices have been supplied primarily by three companies to public and private hospitals in Ireland”.
It pointed out that it does not hold a complete dataset of all devices and all manufacturers and that some of these devices may be more general surgical meshes – for use to treat a hernia, for example.
Department knew of issues in 2012
The correspondence released to this website also reveals that department officials were briefed about mesh implants by the Irish Medicines Board (now the HPRA) back in October 2012.
The briefing, which was given by the IMB because of extensive media coverage in other European countries, acknowledged that women in the EU who had issues “seem to have significant ongoing post-op complications that may require multiple surgeries”.
“We only had a very small number of reports in Ireland,” department officials were told.
It also said that at that time “no conclusive generic device family-related issue” had been identified. The IMB said it had written to the obstetrics, gynaecology, urology and general surgery community to seek feedback on the use of these products and to encourage reporting of adverse incidents.
‘I’ve had many problems’
In one letter to the department, released through Freedom of Information Act, a woman wrote asking for information about vaginal mesh surgeries. She said she had her procedure four years ago and has “had many problems since, especially with recurring pain”.
“It has recently been brought to my attention that the British and NI health bodies have been endeavouring to address the problem there and I would like to know if it has come to your attention recently,” she said.
Two Irish women who suffered complications after mesh surgeries to address urinary stress incontinence shared their stories with TheJournal.ie this year. 65-year-old Margaret Byrne said she was never told about potential complications.
After the recovery following her surgery had passed, she tried to resume sexual relations with her with husband and they soon realised something was not right.He could feel something very sharp and so could I. So, on inspection, which is not really something you want to do, I found that part of the tape had cut through my vagina and was now sticking there, sharp-edged.
It took years and several operations to cover up and eventually remove much of the mesh tape from her body.
48-year-old Janet Roche only had her mesh removal operation this year, after seven years of chronic pain.
“I don’t take chances, I’m not a lucky person and I never have been, so if they had mentioned for one second any of these risks, I would never have gone ahead with it. I have four kids, I wouldn’t have taken that risk,” she said.
Roche said she is still experiencing pain and has been told she will probably have chronic pain for the rest of her life.
“It’s constant pain medication, morning and night. Sometimes a sleeping tablet is the only thing that will work when it gets really bad. The pain frightens the life out of me.”
Mesh Survivors Ireland
Solicitor Melanie Power set up a support group on Facebook this year for women who have experienced issues following these procedures. There are now more than 100 members.
“I don’t think the numbers in the group are even a reflection of the actual numbers that are affected,” she said. “A lot of people have contacted me who are in the older age group, women who are 60+ and who aren’t on Facebook.”There are some people in it who are getting quite active in the group, which is great. They have come to the realisation that this is a worldwide scandal. But a lot of people are overwhelmed by that. It’s hard for them to come to terms with the fact that they have this device in them and they don’t know how it will affect them in later years.For some, it’s just too much for them to deal with mentally and they don’t want to engage now, but they will when they’re ready.
Sinn Féin TD Louise O’Reilly, who raised the issue in the Dáil with the Health Minister recently, has arranged for Power and some of the women impacted by these surgeries to make a presentation to TDs at Leinster House in January.
“We’re probably two or three years away from an investigation into this, realistically,” Power said. “It’s going to be very easy for the government to say it’s only a minority of patients affected by it and that there’s no big issue – I’m preparing myself for that.
In the short-term, the priority has to be on getting proper treatment for the ladies, and then we can focus on an investigation.”
The HSE has said it is the “responsibility of the consultant to explain to patients the risk involved with this procedure, as with any procedure”.
It declined earlier this month to comment on recommendations made by the UK’s health watchdog to stop using mesh in surgeries to treat pelvic prolapse.
A spokesperson, however, said the Minister for Health “has asked the government Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, to advise on the use of transvaginal mesh implants and that this will take a number of months to complete”.
http://www.thejournal.ie/vaginal-mesh-hse-court-3763075-Dec2017/
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University professor to chair mesh implants group
Dec 24, 2017 | Aberdeen Evening Express
Lorna McKee has been selected to review the use of transvaginal tapes and meshes by NHS Scotland.
The practice, which involves operations to ease issues including incontinence and prolapse, was stopped in 2014 after several women experienced serious complications from the surgery.
Professor McKee, who is emeritus professor of management and health services research at the University of Aberdeen, said many women had benefited but a number suffered “life-changing complications”.
She said: “It is clear safety for women needs to be improved and we believe the oversight group will be a crucial stage in ensuring that this happens. I’m delighted to be appointed to chair this important group and look forward to working with the other group members.”
Health Secretary Shona Robison said: “While we’ve taken measures, based on clinical advice, to suspend this procedure until we are satisfied all necessary procedures, approvals, and restrictions are in place, it is crucial that we understand the full impact of its use.”
https://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/fp/uncategorized/university-professor-to-chair-mesh-implants-group/
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Review of the year: the female groundbreakers of 2017
Dec 26, 2017 | The Independent
By Harriet Marsden
The Merriam-Webster dictionary has chosen “feminism” as its word of the year, and it has certainly been an extraordinary 12 months for women.
We have more female politicians on the world stage than ever before, from the UK to Germany and New Zealand. Countries are starting to tackle period poverty and abolish the tampon tax. A teenager in Mexico invented a bra that could detect breast cancer. Real and significant steps have been taken in the fight against female genital mutilation. The highest-paid boss in the UK is actually a woman. The vaginal mesh health scandal is finally getting the attention it deserves.
And in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the viral #MeToo campaign, we’ve seen an explosion of reckoning – and recognition – of endemic sexual assault and harassment in all kinds of industries. A tangible cultural shift has occurred, as more women feel empowered to speak out against gender violence and more men gain a better appreciation of channels of power and female oppression.
For the first year, The Independent has chosen to highlight a selection of women who have had a real and positive social impact, as well as achieving outstanding results in their field. We’ve attempted to cover a wide range of industries, choosing both high- and low-profile women from literature to charity, media to music, politics to celebrity, activism to athleticism and so on.
We’ve also tried to arrive at a diverse selection of women – without resorting to tokenism – with candidates from a wide range of ethnicities, nationalities, sexual orientations, physical ability and background.
These are our picks for 20 Extraordinary Women of 2017.
Naomi Alderman – literature
Picture the scene: an alternate world where girls suddenly wake up and discover they have the power to electrocute people with their fingers. Suddenly, women are the dominant gender, with all the physical power.
What would happen? That’s the premise of Naomi Alderman’s wildly popular fourth novel, dystopian The Power, which this summer won the £30,000 Baileys Women’s Prize for fiction. More a work of feminist speculative theory than of science fiction, London-born Alderman questions whether women would abuse power any differently to men, given the chance.
Following in the footsteps of Margaret Atwood, her mentor in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, Alderman puts her female protagonists front and centre and refuses to look away from their flaws. This year marks a decade since Alderman was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, and one of Waterstones’ 25 Writers for the Future.
She can hardly be pigeonholed, however; she also writes online games and in 2012, she co-created the top-selling smartphone fitness game and audio adventure Zombies, Run!, a market leader that has been downloaded millions of times. Alderman broadcasts and guest-presents on BBC Radio 4’s Science Stories, as well as working as professor of creative writing at Bath Spa University.
Eni Aluko – sports, race relations
Proving you can be a team player on the field as well as off it, Chelsea striker Eniola Aluko has spent the past two years acting as a whistleblower and uncovering racism and discrimination in the Football Association. Then-manager for the England women’s team, Mark Sampson was eventually found guilty of using racist language towards her and her teammate, Drew Spence, and this year was sacked for inappropriate relationships with his players.
As a young woman, Aluko managed to take her A-levels while playing for England during the Uefa Women’s Euro 2005. She also went on to Brunel to gain a first-class law degree, and then to achieve international law qualifications. In 2014, she was the first woman to appear on BBC’s Match of the Day, and along with her teammates was featured in Fifa 16 video game, also a first for women.
She has made more than 100 appearances for the England national team, and represented Britain in the 2012 Olympics. Birmingham City Ladies manager Marcus Bignot describes her as “the Wayne Rooney of women’s football”. Memorably this year, former England goalkeeper David James posted a tweet appearing to accuse Aluko of lying about the racism she’d suffered, prompting grime artist Stormzy to jump in and call him “an absolute dickhead”.
Professor Mary Beard – academia
Professor Mary Beard is hardly your average scholar, having achieved a cultural niche of bringing classics to the masses via popular television, as well as her academic work and role as a promoter of women. She has been University of Cambridge professor of classics since 2004, and is also classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement, for which she writes a regular column.
In 2012, she wrote and presented the three-part television series, Meet the Romans with Mary Beard, presenting ancient life as relevant to a modern audience. As she achieved national fame – unusual for an academic – she had to contend with the backlash: critic AA Gill judged her “too ugly for television” in a review that mostly concerned her looks. Beard hit back, calling him part of “the blokeish culture that loves to decry clever women”.
She uses her high profile on Twitter to respond to sexist and misogynistic trolling, seeing this as part of her role as a public academic. This summer, she was embroiled in “something of a Twitter storm” when she defended the BBC for producing a schools video about Roman Britain featuring a black soldier. Beard was subjected to a torrent of online abuse, but argued her case based on academic sourcing.
Beard has also presented a lecture entitled “Women in Power, from Medusa to Merkel”, considering the extent of culturally embedded gender and arguing that “we don’t have a model or a template for what a powerful woman looks like. We only have templates that make them men.” She has spent this year proving otherwise.
Lisa Carne – environment
Lisa Carne was only a young biologist and coral researcher when she witnessed the effects of 2001 Hurricane Iris on the Central American country of Belize. In particular, she was struck by how vulnerable the southern Belize marine ecosystem was to climate change like rising sea temperatures.
So, in 2006, Carne founded Fragments of Hope, a community-based organisation that, with the help of a coral nursery, aims to restore an endangered species of Belize’s Barrier Reef, a Unesco World Heritage site. The project has been hailed as a huge success, significantly increased the coral population in Belize.
Carne herself was southern Belize’s first female diving instructor, and trains women to restore coral reef habitats while advocating for sustainable management. In 2014, Carne received the prestigious Ocean Hero Award from Oceana, Belize, for her work with endangered Acropora Corals and her activism in helping protect the marine environment for future generations.
Carne’s strides in research, eco-monitoring and science – traditionally male-dominated areas in the country – have provided access to training in the tourism and conservation sectors, allowing local women to earn higher daily wages. In a country where around half the population depend on tourism from diving, snorkelling and fishing, the ripples of Carne’s activism have spread further than the reef.
Denise Coates – business
Denise Coates CBE may not be a household name, but when you look at her success and CV, that might come as a surprise. Founder of Bet365 and the UK’s highest-paid female boss, Coates took home a salary of no less than £199m last year. Unlike so many other successful business people in the UK, however, she’s very much self-made, making her success even more impressive.
The 50-year-old billionaire began her career as a cashier in her father’s betting shops. She graduated with a first-class degree in econometrics from Sheffield University, and became manager of the family business at the age of 22, expanding it to almost 50 shops. She launched Bet365 – which is still a privately held company – from a temporary office in a Stoke car park, back in 2000. It’s reported that she bought the domain name on eBay for $25,000 (£19,000).
“We mortgaged the betting shops and put it all into online,” she said in a 2012 interview with The Guardian. “We knew the industry required big startup costs but … we gambled everything on it. We were the ultimate gamblers, if you like.”
These days, Bet365 is one the biggest online gambling firms in the UK, and Coates – with her majority stake in it – is the highest-paid female boss ever in the country. Her personal fortune is estimated at £3.06bn, according to Forbes. She was awarded a CBE in 2012 and was named one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK in 2013 Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour.
Dany Cotton – community service
This has undeniably been a difficult year for the emergency services, between fires, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. 2017 also marks the year of the first female Commissioner of the London Fire Brigade in its history: Dany Cotton, QFSM. Incidentally, QFSM stands for Queen’s Fire Service Medal – of which she was the first female recipient in 2004. It also marks seven years since this newspaper named her one of “100 women who changed the world”.
Cotton, 47, is now in charge of 102 fire stations and nearly 5,000 firefighters and 800 other staff. She oversaw emergency responses to the London Bridge and Westminster attacks, was in command of the Fire Brigade when the Grenfell Tower fire erupted: a shocking experience and a disaster she calls “unprecedented”.
This year, she also found the time to spearhead a campaign fighting sexism and promoting the gender-neutral term, firefighter, aiming to encourage young women to consider a career in the fire service. “One single thing that would help bring more women into the service? Stop saying ‘fireman’,” she told The Guardian. “What’s wrong with Firefighter Sam? We have to change that perception of a six foot hairy-arsed bloke who can kick a door down.”
Charlie Craggs – transgender activistCharlie Craggs has found a novel way to tackle transphobia, ignorance and discrimination. The 25-year-old travels the UK with her pop-up nail salon and offers the public free manicures, as well as the chance to sit down and chat with a trans person. She encourages them to ask her questions, all the while breaking down barriers just through her affable personality.
“I want people to go away with more than just a manicure; I want them to go away an ally,” Craggs says. “I’m trying to change hearts and minds a nail at a time.“ The award-winning initiative, “Nails Transphobia”, which Craggs set up when she was a student in 2013, has been highly successful because, as Craggs explains, many people haven’t met a trans person and often have misconceptions.
The project travels around from institutes like the Victoria & Albert Museum, to festivals like Gay Pride and Edinburgh Fringe. Last year, Craggs set up “Nailing It”: a series of workshops for the trans community, with support talks, make-up tutorials and self-defence classes, to name a few. Charlie was ranked on The Observer’s 2016 New Radicals list, a list of social innovators in Britain, and was also named one of the most influential LGBT people in the UK by The Independent.
This year she published To My Trans Sisters, a compilation of essays edited by Craggs, full of advice from a range of women from models to politicians.
Ali Golds – social work, parenting
Ali Golds is that rare person who has managed to channel negative experiences into positive achievement. A survivor of childhood and domestic abuse who left school when she was 16 with few qualifications, and a single mum who faced bankruptcy when her marriage broke up in 2005, Golds is now a successful businesswoman.
She has an HND and a postgraduate certificate in education, and five businesses under her belt, including her company Operation Enterprise, which supports young entrepreneurs of all academic abilities and backgrounds who combine their school studies with developing their businesses. Perturbed by the overwhelming majority of boys in her sessions, and the fact that women account for less than a third of self-employed, Golds was inspired to set up the Juno Project, which helps women to set up their own businesses, as well as challenging negative stereotypes.
Through the Project, Golds also supports vulnerable teenage girls and women who struggle financially, as well as helping female entrepreneurs develop start-ups. Many of the girls have been excluded from school, so the project helps them regain confidence and self-esteem, as well as develop employability skills.
Golds also found that a lot of the women coming to her workshops were single mums wanting to support their families. In response to this, Golds was inspired to write her first book, How To Be Your Own Boss as a Single Mum, which reached number eight in the Amazon Small Business and Entrepreneurship chart. She has even advised the Government on a review of education, and believes that female entrepreneurs often plan their work with more detail than their male cohorts, as well as being fantastic multitaskers.
Tierra Guinn – science
Tierra Guinn’s story echoes this year’s acclaimed film Hidden Figures, the true and little-known story of three brilliant African-American women who played instrumental roles at Nasa during the Space Race. Guinn’s love of numbers was inspired by her accountant mother, who encouraged her with maths games in the supermarket.
From Georgia, her goal from an early age was to become an engineer (“One day I saw a plane fly by and I just had this realisation, ‘huh, I can design planes,’”) and she chose a middle school with good STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) prospects. Now at just 22 years old, Guinn works as a Rocket Structural Design and Analysis Engineer for Boeing, which along with Nasa is creating Earth’s most powerful rocket, ready for deep space. She designs and analyses parts of the rocket – a role she took up even before graduating from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in aerospace engineering.
She wants to encourage other women of colour to enter the field, and this year returned to Lindley Middle School, delivering a speech which inspired students and teachers alike. “There’s no telling where we’ll be going next,” Guinn said on a separate occasion. “Maybe we’ll make it to Pluto. But diversity is a key component.”
Olivia Jackson – sport/disabled rights
South African-born Olivia Jackson is not a woman to be trifled with. Formerly a successful model, she was also ranked as a professional Muay Thai fighter, having trained and competed in Thailand for five years.
She also worked as a professional stuntwoman for more than six years, featured in numerous television series and films including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Guardians of the Galaxy and as one of Charlize Theron’s stunt double in Mad Max: Fury Road. However, in 2015, the 36-year-old suffered a very severe motorbike accident when filming on the set of Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, colliding head on with a camera crane vehicle that failed to move out of her way.
She was left with life-threatening injuries and extensive scarring, and eventually her left arm was amputated. Not to be deterred, this year Jackson joined Team BRIT, a competitive motor-racing team consisting only of drivers who are disabled. The team races able-bodied drivers on a level playing field: unique in the world of sport. The team aims to make history by taking injured troops and civilian disabled drivers through to the famous Le Mans 24-hour endurance race, becoming the first ever all-disabled team to do so.
Rose McGowan – arts
After a lifetime working in the media industry, Rose McGowan has racked up an impressive list of credits, including writer, director, actress, entrepreneur, music artist and, more recently, author and feminist activist. Best known for her part in the 1996 slasher film Scream, and her recurring role as Paige Matthews in the American television series Charmed, her directorial debut, Dawn, was nominated for the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014.
This year, McGowan was one of the first women to speak out against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, paving the way for other accusations and opening up a dialogue about widespread sexual harassment and assault in the media industry. Vocal on social media, McGowan publicly lent her support to the #MeToo campaign while founding the hashtag #ROSEARMY as a means for others to join her in a collective voice.
She was named as one of Time magazine’s “Silence Breakers” in the annual December “Person of the Year” issue, celebrating her prominent role in prompting a cultural shift on issues of sexual violence against women. McGowan’s memoir and manifesto, Brave, a “a no-holds-barred, pull-no-punches accounts of the rise of a millennial icon”, will be published in January.
Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin – music/science
Prishita Maheshwari-Aplin might be only 20 years old, but she’s already racked up a staggering set of achievements in various fields: scientist, journalist, musician, published academic, activist. At just 16, she was the youngest ever shortlisted candidate for a Wellcome Trust Science Writing Prize.
At school, she created a science blog called “Darwin’s Beard”, making current research accessible for young audiences and inspiring students to science. Some of her published works include musings on genetics and medical science, and she’s been nominated by Intel for a WISE Girl award for inspiring young women in science.
Maheshwari-Aplin is an elite violinist and soprano singer, having trained at a specialist music school, and played with Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra, performing in masterclasses with Nicola Benedetti, Viktoria Grigorieva and Madeleine Mitchell. Maheshwari-Aplin is now first violin at the Cambridge University Chamber Orchestra.
She’s also worked as deputy editor of The Cambridge Student, won the university instrumental award for the third year running, and has just spent two months in Tanzania working as an Impact Evaluator for an International Education Charity. In fact, she’s just been appointed project director for next year’s trip. Dr Tucker Gilman, of the University of Manchester, spoke for all of us when he commented: “Prishita’s achievement is astounding.”
Gina Miller – politics, philanthropy
Investment manager and campaigner for political transparency she may be, but Gina Miller is probably better known for being the woman who took Brexit to court – and won. After the referendum, the British-Guyanese businesswoman challenged the legal authority of the Government to invoke Article 50 using prerogative powers, demanding a proper parliamentary debate and approval.
In November last year, the High Court of Justice ruled that Parliament had to legislate before the Government could invoke Article 50, which was subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court in January. Miller faced a torrent of online abuse from Brexit supporters, including racial abuse and death threats, but didn’t back down on her campaign for transparency and democracy. After the election this year, she also launched a legal challenge against the Conservative-DUP agreement.
Miller is also a long-term philanthropist; in 2009, she established Miller Philanthropy (now the True and Fair Foundation), with the aim of increasing efficient philanthropy in the face of growing social inequality. This background attuned her to hidden charges, and what she has described as “flagrant misselling within the asset management market”. In 2012 she set up the True and Fair Campaign to limit this, attracting some opposition in the City and earning her the nickname of “black widow spider”. A few years later, in 2014 she also established MoneyShe.com, a female-focused investment brand. This year, she was named in Powerlist as the “UK’s most influential black person”.
Kath Sansom – activism, women’s health
The past few years have seen the “biggest health scandal since thalidomide” blown wide open, and nobody has done more to expose the truth than Kath Sansom. In 2015, after she received a vaginal mesh implant to treat incontinence, she suffered agonising pain and knew something was wrong. She began to do some research online, and stumbled into a world of pain and ignored suffering: what would become known as the vaginal mesh scandal.
As she herself wrote: “It probably needed a journalist to be mesh injured, to provide the final media push needed for the issue to get to Westminster.” Since her surgery and particularly this year, Sansom has used her extensive research and expertise to bring the scandal to light, keeping it in the national news agenda and tirelessly campaigning for awareness via the group she founded, Sling the Mesh.
This October, Sansom spearheaded a cross-party debate in Parliament, and succeeded in bringing the issue enough attention to warrant a BBC Panorama investigation. As her group gains more members by the day, Sansom has also used social media to act as a touchstone of comfort and advice for all the new “meshies”, as the community calls themselves. To the thousands of men and women injured by hernia and vaginal mesh implants, Sansom is more than a campaigner: she’s a lifesaver. And if her activism leads to a full ban on mesh implants, that’s exactly what she’ll be.
Lauren Soderberg – food and drink
You might not have known that the position of beer guru for the New World Trading Companies (a pub group across 19 sites in the UK) even existed, but this year Lauren Soderberg became the first woman to achieve it. In a typically male-dominated industry, the NWTC wanted to showcase a female expert: Soderberg passed her NWTC Master of Beer qualification (including a two-hour exam, a 2,000-word essay and a blind tasting) with flying colours.
She is now head of beer training in more than 20 pubs, and regularly holds ale-tasting masterclasses for consumers. She is a proud teacher for the next generation of beer gurus and says being a mentor is her favourite part of the job. “I am so proud to be able to help girls pave new careers and follow their passion,” she says. “Beer has always been such a masculine industry and it’s time for the girls to take over. Being able to be a mentor and a friend to these girls as they prove themselves against some of the biggest male names in the industry makes my job worthwhile.”
She has already been highly featured across female networking events such as the Women in Law in Manchester and will be on the panel for Beardless Beer Week – an event entirely dedicated to women in the beer industry.
Dr Laura Stachel – medicine/environment
Obstetrician-gynaecologist Dr Laura Stachel has combined two worthy causes into one: maternal health and renewable energy sources, to make strides in both simultaneously. In 2008, watching doctors perform an emergency Caesarean section in Nigeria, Stachel was alarmed when the power went out.
The doctors were, however, very used to it. Stachel had a flashlight with her, and the surgery was able to continue. Realising her skills were “utterly useless without something as basic as light and electricity”, Stachel co-founded a non-profit project called We Care Solar with her husband, which brings solar power to remote, off-grid and under-resourced medical centres across the world – in tiny compact bags known as “Solar Suitcases”.
These contain medical-quality lighting, foetal monitors, phone chargers and headlamps, and are given to community health workers and traditional birth attendants. They are now in use all over Africa, Asia and Central America, where they continue to improve safety and neonatal health, and to save labouring mothers’ lives. This March, the project announced its intention to support Liberia as it becomes the first country to pledge to “Light Every Birth” with clean solar lighting and electricity.
Stachel says: “We look forward to working hand in hand with our Light Every Birth partners to improve the functioning of off-grid health centres, and to advocate for the fundamental right for all mothers to deliver with reliable lighting and power.”
Camilla Thurlow – celebrity and activist
You may not have enjoyed it, you may not even have watched it, but you cannot deny that ITV’s dating “reality” show Love Island became a cultural phenomenon this year. Even Jeremy Corbyn professed to be a fan. And one contestant, Camilla Thurlow, gained widespread media attention for her unusual profession.
The 28-year-old rumoured ex of Prince Harry, from Dumfries, works in explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), or minesweeping. EOD also involves recovering abandoned – and unexploded – bombs, shells and grenades. She works for the charity the Halo Trust, the world’s largest humanitarian mine-clearing organisation, made famous by Princess Diana in 1997 when she walked through a field in Angola. Thurlow has worked in Cambodia for 18 months, where there are still an estimated five million unexploded mines, and more recently Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
She achieved popularity on the show not just for her soft-spoken and sweet nature and romance with a fellow contestant, but for her open discussion of her feminist ideals in the face of some outstandingly bone-headed sexism. She told The Times (who describe has as the perfect millennial icon): “My main worry was whether I’d done the topic justice. It is such a crucial time for us to talk about equality.”
Women of the White Helmets – peace, military activism
In the face of one of modern history’s most devastating conflicts, one small group of volunteers continues to work save lives: the Syrian Civil Defence – or the White Helmets. Founded in 2012, the volunteer group operates in the rebel-held strongholds of Syria where the bombs fall most frequently. They rescue people from rubble, put out fires and take casualties to field hospitals, and they have saved an estimated 12,500 lives.
The group was exclusively male until 2014, but since then, around 140 women have joined the project. Although this shocked some at first, eventually the mindsets began to change. Due to tradition and cultural norms regarding bodies and nakedness, some women reportedly feel more comfortable being approached and rescued by women. In some places, the men won’t allow a woman to be rescued by another man.
The female volunteers also focus on medical care and raising awareness, one volunteer tells the Women and Girls news site. “Society is now realising that Syrian women can do anything and we can help with anything,” she said. Last year, the group was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and were immortalised in an Oscar-winning documentary. This year, as the battles to reclaim Syria have intensified, the volunteers continue to work in the most dangerous areas. As their motto goes: “To save one life is to save all of humanity.”
Funda Yakin – gaming/technology
Paving the way for gamer girls everywhere, Funda Yakin was last year made director of media and market development for InnoGames, Germany’s largest video game developer and one of the top five TV-ad spenders in the US.
The 37-year-old had previously been working for Microsoft in Germany and the US, as head of consumer and commercial marketing, bringing more than 15 years of experience. Yakin is now aiming to help women in the tech and gaming industry through a mentorship program, helping young women navigate a male-dominated and sometimes-toxic environment, build up international skills and gain opportunities to expand their network. Described as “a great role model for any career-driven woman” by one of her protégées, Yakin is one of few prominent women in the gaming side of the tech industry.
Malala Yousafzai – education
It seems like longer than five years ago that Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai was shot by the Taliban at 15 for the crime of going to school – and much longer than that since she made her speech to the UN, advocating girls’ right to an education, that propelled her onto the world stage.
But children grow up fast, and it’s hard to believe how much Malala has achieved in her 20 years. One of the biggest events of Yousafzai’s 2017 was beginning her studies at Oxford University, where she is reading philosophy, politics and economics (PPE). The youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, she was honoured with further accolades this year in recognition of her work by a host of global organisations.
She became the youngest UN Messenger of Peace, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ottawa, received an International Ellis Island Medal of Honour, was named Wonk of the Year 2017 – which honours individuals who demonstrate engagement, focus, intelligence, and passion – from American University, and made it onto Harper’s Bazaar’s list of the 150 most influential female leaders in the UK.
Through the Malala Fund, she continues to campaign tirelessly for girls’ education, focussing in recent years on the plight of Syrian refugee children. Finally, if there was doubt left in anyone’s mind, she was described – along with single mothers and female astronauts – as being “more badass” than Taylor Swift.
Additional reporting by Josie Cox and Jo Turner
http://www.independent.co.uk/review%20of%20the%20year/review-of-the-year-extraordinary-women-2017-female-groundbreakers-sexism-me-too-feminism-sheroes-a8103171.html
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The post-pregnancy belly problem that nobody tells women about
Dec 22, 2017 | Vox
By Allison Yarrow
After Jenna Angst gave birth to her second child, she noticed that her midsection didn’t look right. “I was frustrated that my stomach looked so pudgy, even after I got back to my normal weight,” Angst, 37, says. So she asked her OB-GYN in Atlanta to take a look. The doctor brushed her off, telling her it was purely aesthetic.
But Angst wondered if it might be something she’d heard about in a yoga class once that went by the name of “mom pooch,” “mummy tummy,” or “baby belly.” So she went to doctors, specialists, and physical therapists in search of an answer. Finally, one told her that, yes, she had diastasis recti, a condition where the abdominal muscles separate so much that the stomach protrudes.
“I found it appalling that I had to go on such a journey to get answers — talking to friends, to my OB, to a [physical therapist] and four plastic surgeons,” said Angst, who eventually got treated for the condition. “The information is not readily available. It wasn’t until well after my son’s first birthday that I had some answers.”
Angst’s struggle to understand this postpartum condition is not unusual. Though research suggests that at least 60 percent of women have DR six weeks after birth and 30 percent of women have it a year after birth, most women have never heard of the term.
As with many other postpartum complications that affect women, there is little good research on the condition. Women aren’t routinely screened for DR at the one standard postpartum visit that occurs around six weeks after birth. And if they do get a diagnosis, they are often told that core work — for instance, tons of crunches — will tone the tummy and thus, close the gap.
But core work done improperly or alone won’t necessarily fix the problem. In fact, it can even make things worse. And over the long term, DR can compromise the stability and function of the core, and is linked to a host of other problems that can crop up even years after childbirth.
Given that so many women are forced to learn about DR on their own, here is a guide for how to try to prevent it and address it from those who treat it.Diastasis, defined
Diastasis recti is caused by the overstretching of the linea alba, the tissue or fascia at the center of the rectus abdominis muscles, the “six-pack” muscles to the right and left of the bellybutton.
The normal width of the linea alba between the rectus abdominis allows you to bend, twist, and carry a fetus. “There is a natural opening there whether you’ve had a baby or not,” says Brandi Kirk, an Illinois-based pelvic health specialist and educator at the Barral Institute. “It’s where the umbilical cord was.”
But too much pressure can stretch it out. Doctors diagnose diastasis recti when the distance between the two sides of the rectus abdominis muscle gets to be two centimeters or more.
DR can affect anyone — women, men, and children. “Coughing, laughing, pooping, breathing, birthing, and moving (i.e., your posture and exercise habits) are all things that can change the amount of pressure in your abdomen” and can, over time, cause DR, writes Katy Bowman, a biomechanist, in her book Diastasis Recti: The Whole Body Solution to Abdominal Weakness and Separation.
It’s most common in pregnant and postpartum women because of the load a growing fetus places on the linea alba, which Bowman likens to a shirt seam. The linea alba connects muscles the way the seam connects fabric, but it’s also the shirt’s weakest part, prone to splitting when stretched too much. “Abdominal separation is not about fitness; it’s about forces,” says Bowman.Postpartum DR is underreported and undertreated
Clinicians who treat DR say they see it most in women who carry large babies or twins, have given birth multiple times, are petite or short-torsoed, or have tight abdominal muscles prior to pregnancy. Other women at risk include those with a history of surgery, C-section, constipation, or weak connective tissues.
Alicia Willoughby, a pelvic health physical therapist who has treated more than 100 women with DR, believes it’s more common than doctors acknowledge. She says the data we do have likely doesn’t capture the full extent of the problem, “because it is underreported, and many women are never screened for one.” Most often, women learn about it in an exercise class, or they self-diagnose after reading about it online.
DR can affect women even years after pregnancy and childbirth, and can lead to all kinds of problems and pain — like pelvic organ prolapse (when organs drop into the vagina), urinary and fecal incontinence, loss of stability, breathing and digestive problems, pelvic girdle pain, back pain, and pain or reduced sensation during sex.
Michele McGurk is a women’s health physical therapist specializing in abdominal and pelvic dysfunction in Brooklyn, New York. She says that a separation two and a half finger widths or wider is where she begins to see dysfunction in other areas of the body. Some 66 percentof women with DR also presented at least one form of pelvic floor dysfunction, like incontinence or prolapse, in a survey of urogynecology patients.
The most accurate way to diagnose DR is with ultrasound imaging, but pelvic health physical therapists and urogynecologists — the specialists who see the condition most — usually diagnose it manually. They say the best time to be evaluated is at least six weeks after birth, once tissue has healed and the uterus has shrunk to its pre-pregnancy size. During a screening, a woman lies supine, exhales, then lifts into an abdominal curl. Then a clinician measures the gap above, below, and at the navel with her fingers.Why some people object to calling it “mummy tummy”
DR can give the belly a soft, protruding appearance. It can push the bellybutton out, or look like a visible gulch at the midsection when a woman bends or does an abdominal curl.
Courtney Wyckoff, the founder of the Momma Strong workout program, suffered from a large DR and related pain after pregnancy. But she argues the focus around DR should be on mobility and function, not aesthetics. For instance, can a woman bend and touch her toes? Can she wake up without pain? Is she peeing herself?
But most of the DR advice out there is on how to flatten the tummy and “bounce back” after pregnancy rather than how to strengthen the function of the core, pelvis, muscles, and organs. A recent NPR story, “Flattening the Mummy Tummy With One Exercise 10 Minutes a Day,” elicited a huge response, both positive and negative. Some women felt it reinforced the problematic cultural standard that women should have flat tummies. A follow-up NPR story addressed some of the comments and recommended additional exercises.
Still, few studies have evaluated DR treatment thoroughly enough for there to be definitive clinical guidelines about how to treat it.Exercise may help, but you can’t talk about repairing DR without talking about the pelvic floor
The clinicians I interviewed who have diagnosed and treated hundreds of DR cases collectively agree that it can be treated. But they stress that the abdominals are only part of the equation. McGurk coaches women to reconnect to their pelvic floor and their transverse abdominis muscles, which can essentially turn off during pregnancy and childbirth.
Abdominal exercise, coaching, and visualization that incorporates the pelvic floor and proper breathing techniques (inhaling when relaxing, exhaling when contracting) can reestablish the connection between the muscles and the brain and strengthen not only the abdominals but also the pelvic floor, she says.
"Stabilizing diastasis during pregnancy and postpartum is all about reconnecting the brain with the deep abdominal layer called the transverse abdominis," says Willoughby. “The transverse abdominis and the pelvic floor are best friends that need and can’t work without each other.”
A 2014 review of eight studies evaluating what impact exercise has on preventing or healing diastasis was inconclusive. Recent studies have tested two specific exercises on DR — abdominal crunches and an exercise called “drawing in.”
Drawing in involves inhaling to fill the belly with air, then exhaling and moving the belly back toward the spine. (Willoughby says the key is to inhale as you relax muscles and then engage as you exhale.) But in the study, the subjects were only measured doing the exercises in a lab, not over a period of time.
Wyckoff teaches a technique called bracing that involves contracting the abdominal muscles in concert with lifting the pelvic floor “like a claw crane.” If you’re not sure if you’re doing it right, see a trained professional who can test and feel if the proper muscles are engaging during the exercises.New DR research is looking at techniques that go beyond exercise
Brandi Kirk has treated DR for a decade. She and others trained in visceral manipulation, a physical therapy technique developed by French osteopath Jean-Pierre Barral, have applied it to the small intestine and seen DR patients improve function and narrow their gaps. Kirk presented the findings of a very small case study of the technique at theAmerican Physical Therapy Association conference, and will expand her study next year.
A controlled trial from Cairo University in Egypt recently discovered that women who used neuromuscular electrical stimulation, which uses electrical current to get muscles to contract, on their abdominal muscles in addition to exercise saw more DR improvement than women who did exercise alone.
Exercises can only go so far if other daily movements don’t support the work, according to Bowman. “It’s not only about how or how much you exercise — there’s a whole bunch of non-exercise things, like how you breathe, how you hold your body (read: suck in your stomach), and even how you dress, that can place unnatural loads on your linea alba,” she explains in her book.
Some doctors opt to repair DR with laparoscopic surgery or abdominoplasty, often accompanied by liposuction. This can be a viable option for severe cases of diastasis and abdominal hernia. But research on the DR-repairing operations has found that surgical correction carries risks and is “largely cosmetic.”
The pelvic health therapists I spoke to stress that surgical repair won’t teach the muscles to function properly, and that women who undergo surgery should seek out rehabilitative physical therapy afterward. These surgeries are also costly and aren’t usually covered by insurance.
DR is technically healed once it measures two finger widths or less. But the pelvic health physical therapists are concerned with more than measurements — they want to see that the tissues support the abdomen, and that woman can function without pain elsewhere in the body.Crunches done wrong can make DR worse
Some health care providers and fitness instructors believe that a flabby postpartum belly can be flattened simply with abdominal exercise, such as crunches — which many people with DR end up doing wrong and with too much force.
“A lot of women out there taking Pilates and yoga classes are not engaging the correct muscles,” McGurk says. “One of my primary concerns is to get the proper muscles firing. Are you feeling the two sides of the TA glide together? For the majority of women it’s not happening, or it’s asymmetrical.”
Particularly, crunches done wrong can encourage diastasis, or worsen it. PTs tell pregnant and postpartum women to avoid any sit-up-like motion or abdominal exercise in which the head or feet leave the floor. Upper body twisting, spinal extension (like in a bridge pose), and bearing down during a bowel movement can increase pressure on the linea alba and encourage muscle separation.
Anything that forces the belly to bulge can pose a risk for further separation or even abdominal hernia, when an organ protrudes through a gap. Willoughby says that a DR is not healed “if there is doming or bulging along the middle of the abdominals when a load is placed on the body, such as lifting a child.” Wyckoff recommends that women with separation lift themselves up from a supine position by rolling to one side and using their arm to push up, rather than curling straight up.DR can be prevented during pregnancy
A common occurrence clinicians see leading to DR is when pregnant women ignore their core altogether. “During pregnancy the core muscles take a little vacation,” Willoughby explains. “We need them to work and stay functional. Keep those muscles active through exercise. That may help prevent DR or speed recovery.”
Bowman says OBGYNs often tell pregnant women to avoid abdominal exercise altogether because they, like many, are only thinking of crunches. Instead, they can do strengthening exercises like drawing in or bracing that engage abdominal muscles and pelvic floor muscles. (See the Momma Strong for more details on the exercises.)
Pregnancy can be one of the best times to work on diastasis prevention. “Your body, your baby’s body, your pregnancy, and your delivery could benefit greatly from working to restore functional, biologically necessary core strength while you’re pregnant,” Bowman writes.
The other good news is that it’s never too late to work to repair a diastasis, according to clinicians. And Wyckoff stresses that if unhappiness with a DR’s appearance is why women decide to address their stability and function issues, that’s fine.
“It’s okay to not want a pooch,” she says. “I think that’s a primal, normal way in. Once you feel that, the question becomes how am I going to support this, and what else does it mean for my body? It’s going to take a lot for us to start focusing on function.”
Allison Yarrow is a journalist, a TED resident, and author of the forthcoming 90s Bitch: Women, Media, and The Failed Promise of Gender Equality. Find her on Twitter @aliyarrow.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/12/22/16772580/diastasis-recti-pregnancy-mommy-pooch
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