See below for details on support of the COVID-19 response
Fifteen years ago a really good friend of mine received a double lung transplant at Toronto General Hospital, after seeing all of the fantastic innovation that is directed at improved outcomes for transplant receipients I was keen to further my support of the Toronto General & Western Hospital Foundation.
Five years ago I arranged to work for Dr. Shaf Keshavjee for the month of March. Dr. Keshavjee is the Surgeon-in Chief at University Health Network and the Director of the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at Toronto General Hospital. This year I am going to do the same to celebrate another 5 years.
As you can imagine it is pretty competitive to land a position at the largest lung transplant centre in the world. The exciting thing is we can all work for Dr. Keshavjee. For my donation all I asked my company not to pay me for my hours in March and instead send that money to Dr. Keshavjee via the Toronto General & Western Hospital Foundation. For others you can donate a few minutes, hours or days worth of salary via this website.
The money raised via this campaign goes directly to Lung Transplant Research. To see some of the incredible innovations and sucesses that this fundrasising supports please past the following links into your browser:
https://tgwhf.ca/stories/featured-on-ctv-news-ajmera-transplant-centre-once-again-the-largest-in-north-america/
https://tgwhf.ca/stories/drs-shaf-keshavjee-and-marcelo-cypel-named-joint-winners-of-uhn-inventor-of-the-year/
https://tgwhf.ca/stories/preserving-donor-lungs-longer-makes-transplant-surgery-safer-efficient/
https://tgwhf.ca/stories/a-beam-of-light-that-could-be-a-game-changer-for-transplant/
Thank you for taking the time to consider supporting Lung Transplant Research!
COVID-19 Response:
Key to an effective response to the current novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is a method to rapidly identify emergency department patients presenting with symptoms of COVID-19 and are at high risk of progressing to severe illness and death.
At University Health Network, our team represents a deeply experienced group of critical care doctors and infectious disease researchers who can immediately respond to the global need to provide an accurate diagnosis of respiratory illness – the main feature of COVID-19 – at the front lines of patient care. We have recently developed a 40 minute diagnostic test to determine lung quality for transplantation. Recent scientific studies from China clearly show that the body's development of respiratory distress as a response to potential COVID-19 infection produces an identical injury profile that would be detected by our diagnostic test.
We will work alongside SQI Diagnostics, our Canadian partner committed to developing diagnostics for lung health, to adapt our test towards the development of a diagnostic that can be used by hospital emergency departments to screen for lung sickness and the likelihood of COVID-19 infection. An important part of our this research is a commitment from our Chinese collaborators to safely test our diagnostic first on COVID-19+ blood samples to make sure the test is highly accurate before hospital use. With our 40 minute diagnostic test, we will:
· Quickly identify the highest risk patients in need of immediate care
· Identify lower risk patients who require at-home monitoring
· Reduce the current major stress on health care facilities
Additionally, new COVID-19 therapies are being rapidly developed around the world, and the first step will be to identify which patients will benefit the most from these treatments. With this diagnostic test, hospitals everywhere can better manage patient care and provide an accelerated response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Those that have donated in the past have supported the research that made the diagnostic test listed above available to transplant teams. With some additional effort this diagnostic test could be an important tool to slow the spread of COVID-19. We believe that it is prudent at this time to support Dr. Keshavjee on this research even though it is not specific to Lung Transplant.