The Alpha-1 Channel

The Federation of International Respiratory Societies have declared Oct. 14 World Spirometry Day to celebrate lung health during the Year of the Lung.

This coordinated event to deliver free spirometry helps raise awareness for lung disease around the world. Spirometry is a simple diagnostic tool that can be utilized to screen for lung diseases like COPD. Everyone who has a stake in raising awareness of lung disease, COPDers and providers alike, have a role to play in this event.

Events that are being planned will be logged on the World Spirometry Day website

Do you want to be a part of the World Spirometry Day Festivities? Check out the World Spirometry Day calendar for an event near you. And if you don’t see an event registered in your area, you can start your own! There are organizing kits available on the World Spirometry Day Website. If you are not a health professional, contact your doctor’s office or local hospital or community center or any of the partner organizations to help.

The kits include guides to run a mass spirometry events in a hospital setting and in a community setting, sample media kits for contacting the press, promotional materials that can be used for marketing (banners, signs, t-shirts, etc.), questionnaires and forms to be used for testing and education fact sheets on spirometry screening, living with COPD and smoking and lung disease. The kits are all downloadable form the above website, personalized for your event and reproduced as needed.

What can you do if you are not a health professional? You can help organize the place and date, coordinate the medical professionals and the equipment needed to do the testing, market the event by contacting the media, help fundraise to pay for the event, and coordinate educational materials about the importance of lung health and lung diseases.

MIAMI – The Alpha-1 Foundation today congratulated Baxter International and Kamada Ltd. on their new agreement for the distribution and manufacture of Kamada’s intravenous alpha-1 antitrypsin product Glassia for treatment of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency.

Baxter will have exclusive rights to Glassia in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Kamada, an Israeli biopharmaceutical company, developed Glassia, which was approved in July by the US Food and Drug Administration.

“We are pleased that Baxter, with its extensive experience in the Alpha-1 market, has contracted for the distribution,” said Foundation President & CEO John Walsh. “We are hopeful that this agreement will provide an opportunity for much closer cooperation with the Alpha-1 community. We also hope that this agreement will assist Kamada in accelerating the development of aerosolized therapy for Alpha-1.”

OWATONNA, MN — In one respect, Team Harley’s goal was simple: All they wanted to do was finish the Owatonna Rotary/Steele County Free Fair 4-Mile Run. But there’s a lot more to it than that.

The family ran with the hope that dad and granddad Harley Janke will be well enough to see them cross the finish line next year, too.

To that end, they donned personalized T-shirts (emblazoned with “Run 4 Poppa”) and took to the road on Saturday.

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Despite the economic recession, the Medicare Trust Fund is now expected to remain solvent until 2029, 12 years longer than was projected last year.

Much of the projected improvement in Medicare finances is due to a provision of the ACA that reduces payment updates for most Medicare goods and services other than physicians’ services and drugs.

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