(HealthDay)—A state-of-the-art home gym might not just be beyond the scope of your budget, it also might be beyond the scope of available space. But don’t rule out this convenient fitness option so fast.
According to the American Council on Exercise, if you can clear a 6-foot by 6-foot area for working out, you can outfit a home gym with the basics for under $100. Plus, these space-conscious items can be stored in a closet or under the bed when not in use. Just don’t forget that they’re there once you buy them!
Start with a good mat for floor work, like yoga, Pilates, ab exercises and push-ups. The price typically depends on the thickness you choose, and thickness depends on what you’re using it for.
Next is at least one stability ball for doing a variety of exercises, including balance work and crunches. Choose one made for your weight and height. When you’re sitting on it, your thighs should be parallel with the floor.
Stretchy resistance bands are great for strength training when you don’t want a full set of weights. On their own, they weigh nothing and take up less space than a pair of socks. You might buy them in various tensions to match up with the different strengths of various muscle groups. There are also circular bands that go around your ankles for working the outer hips.
If you’d like to use dumbbells for upper body work, a set with three pairs of graduated weights is an inexpensive option. If you’re a beginner, choose a set with 3-, 5- and 10-pound weights; if you’re more experienced, go for 5-, 10- and 15-pounds.
However, you might get more mileage for your money with a barbell and weight plates—but again, start with low-weight plates and then add as you gain strength.
A new scientific study of forecasts and alternative scenarios for life expectancy and major causes of death in 2040 shows all countries are likely to experience at least a slight increase in lifespans. In contrast, one scenario finds nearly half of all nations could face lower life expectancies.
The rankings of nations’ life expectancies offer new insights into their health status.
For example, China, with an average life expectancy of 76.3 years in 2016, ranked 68th among 195 nations. However, if recent health trends continue it could rise to a rank of 39th in 2040 with an average life expectancy of 81.9 years, an increase of 5.6 years.
In contrast, the United States in 2016 ranked 43rd with an average lifespan of 78.7 years. In 2040, life expectancy is forecast to increase only 1.1 years to 79.8, but dropping in rank to 64th. By comparison, the United Kingdom had a lifespan of 80.8 years in 2016 and is expected to increase to 83.3, raising its rank from 26th to 23rd in 2040.
In addition, the study, published today in the international medical journal The Lancet, projects a significant increase in deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs), including diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), chronic kidney disease, and lung cancer, as well as worsening health outcomes linked to obesity.
However, there is “great potential to alter the downward trajectory of health” by addressing key risk factors, levels of education, and per capita income, authors say.
“The future of the world’s health is not pre-ordained, and there is a wide range of plausible trajectories,” said Dr. Kyle Foreman, Director of Data Science at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, and lead author on the study. “But whether we see significant progress or stagnation depends on how well or poorly health systems address key health drivers.”
The top five health drivers that explain most of the future trajectory for premature mortality are high blood pressure, high body mass index, high blood sugar, tobacco use, and alcohol use, Foreman said. Air pollution ranked sixth.
In addition to China, several other nations are expected in 2040 to increase substantially in their rankings in terms of life expectancy, including:
Syria is expected to rise most in rank globally—from 137th in 2016 to 80th in 2040 -likely, according to the authors, due to a conservative model for conflict;
Nigeria from 157th to 123rd; and
Indonesia from 117th to 100th
In contrast, Palestine is expected to drop the most in its life expectancy ranking—from 114th in 2016 to 152nd in 2040. Moreover, several high-income nations are forecast to drop substantially in their rankings, including:
United States, dropping the most for high-income countries, from 43rd in 2016 to 64th in 2040;
Canada from 17th to 27th ;
Norway from 12th to 20th ;
Taiwan (Province of China) from 35th to 42nd ;
Belgium from 21st to 28th ;
Netherlands from 15th to 21st ;
The rankings also find that Spain is expected to place first in the world in 2040 (average lifespan of 85.8 years), a rise from fourth in 2016 (average lifespan of 82.9 years). Japan, ranked first in 2016 (average lifespan 83.7 years), will drop to second place in 2040 (average lifespan 85.7 years).
Rounding out the top 10 for 2040 are:
Singapore (average lifespan 85.4 years) ranked third, as compared to 83.3 years in 2016 and ranking also of third
Switzerland (average lifespan 85.2 years), as compared to 83.3 years in 2016 and ranking of second
Portugal (average lifespan 84.5 years), as compared to 81.0 years in 2016 and ranking of 23rd
Italy (average lifespan 84.5 years), as compared to 82.3 years in 2016 and ranking of seventh
Israel (average lifespan 84.4 years), as compared to 82.1 years in 2016 and ranking of 13th
France (average lifespan 84.3 years), as compared to 82.3 years in 2016 and ranking also of eighth
Luxembourg (average lifespan 84.1 years) as compared to 82.2 years in 2016 and ranking of 10th
Australia (average lifespan 84.1 years), as compared to 82.5 years in 2016 and ranking of fifth.
Among those top 10 nations, even their ‘worse’ scenarios in 2040 remain above 80 years. In stark contrast, the bottom-ranked nations, which include Lesotho, Swaziland, Central African Republic, and South Africa, the “better” and “worse scenarios” in 2040 range from a high of 75.3 years in South Africa (“better” scenario) to a low of 45.3 years in Lesotho (“worse scenario”), a 30-year difference.
“Inequalities will continue to be large,” said IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray. “The gap between the ‘better’ and ‘worse’ scenarios will narrow but will still be significant. In a substantial number of countries, too many people will continue earning relatively low incomes, remain poorly educated, and die prematurely. But nations could make faster progress by helping people tackle the major risks, especially smoking and poor diet.”
In a “worse” scenario, life expectancy decreases in nearly half of all countries over the next generation. Specifically, 87 countries will experience a decline, and 57 will see an increase of one year or more. In contrast, in the “better” scenario, 158 countries will see life expectancy gains of at least five years, while 46 nations may see gains of 10 years or more.
The future shift toward increased premature mortality from NCDs and injuries and away from communicable diseases is apparent by the changing proportions of the top 10 causes of premature death.
In 2016, four of the top 10 causes of premature mortality were NCDs or injuries; in contrast, in 2040, that number increases to eight. The eight NCD or injury causes in the top ten in 2040 are expected to be ischemic heart disease, stroke, COPD, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, road injuries, and lung cancer.
The study is unprecedented in scope, Foreman said, and provides more robust statistical modeling and more comprehensive and detailed estimates of risk factors and diseases than previous forecasts from the United Nations and other population studies institutes.
IHME researchers leveraged data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study to produce forecasts and alternative “better” and “worse” scenarios for life expectancy and mortality due to 250 causes of death for 195 countries and territories.
Researchers produced forecasts of independent drivers of health, including sociodemographic measurements of fertility, per capita income, and years of education, along with 79 independent drivers of health such as smoking, high body mass index, and lack of clean water and sanitation. They then used information on how each of these independent drivers affects specific causes of death to develop forecasts of mortality.
“The range of ‘better’ and ‘worse’ scenarios enables stakeholders to examine potential changes to improve health systems—locally, nationally, and globally,” Murray said. “These scenarios offer new insights and help to frame health planning, especially regarding long lag periods between initial investments and their impacts, such as in the research and development of drugs.”
In addition to calling attention to the growing importance of non-communicable diseases, the analysis exposes a substantial risk of HIV/AIDS mortality rebounding, which could undo recent life expectancy gains in several nations in sub-Saharan Africa.
Furthermore, while NCDs are projected to rise in many low-income countries, communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases are likely to remain among the leading causes of early death, thereby creating a “double burden” of disease.
The study is entitled “Forecasting life expectancy, years of life lost, and all-cause and cause-specific mortality for 250 causes of death: reference and alternative scenarios for 2016-40 for 195 countries and territories.”
LONDON – Stem-cell tourism involving patients who travel to developing countries for treatment with unproven and potentially risky therapies should be more tightly regulated, international health experts said on Wednesday.
With hundreds of medical centers around the world claiming to be able to repair damaged tissue in conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease, tackling unscrupulous advertising of such procedures is crucial.
These therapies are advertised directly to patients with the promise of a cure, but there is often little or no evidence to show they will help, or that they will not cause harm, the 15 experts wrote in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
Some types of stem cell transplant – mainly using blood and skin stem cells – have been approved by regulators after full clinical trials found they could treat certain types of cancer and grow skin grafts for burns patients.
But many other potential therapies are only in the earliest stages of development and have not been approved by international regulators.
"Stem cell therapies hold a lot of promise, but we need rigorous clinical trials and regulatory processes to determine whether a proposed treatment is safe, effective and better than existing treatments," said one of the 15, Sarah Chan of Britain’s University of Edinburgh.
The experts called for global action, led by the World Health Organization, to introduce controls on advertising and agree international standards for the manufacture and testing of cell and tissue-based therapies.
"The globalization of health markets and the specific tensions surrounding stem cell research and its applications
have made this a difficult challenge," they wrote. "However, the stakes are too high not to take a united stance."
BOSTON – A former Massachusetts pharmacy executive who was convicted of racketeering and fraud charges for his role in a deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak in 2012 is scheduled to be sentenced on Monday.
Barry Cadden, the co-founder and former president of the now-defunct New England Compounding Center, was convicted in March of those crimes by a federal jury in Boston but cleared of the harshest charges he faced, second-degree murder.
Prosecutors are seeking at least 35 years in prison for Cadden, whose conduct they said led to 778 patients nationwide being harmed after receiving contaminated steroids injections. That includes 76 people who died, they said.
His lawyers counter that prosecutors are seeking to demonize Cadden, who they said was not convicted of knowing the drugs were contaminated, just of misrepresenting how they were made. They say Cadden, 50, deserves around only three years in prison.
Cadden was one of 14 people tied to Framingham, Massachusetts-based New England Compounding Center (NECC) indicted in 2014 following the outbreak. He was one of only two people to face second-degree murder charges.
Prosecutors said Cadden, NECC’s head pharmacist, ran the company as a criminal enterprise that sold substandard and non-sterile drugs produced in filthy conditions and shipped to medical facilities nationally for use on unsuspecting patients.
They said Cadden directed the shipment of 17,600 vials of contaminated steroids often prescribed for back pain despite knowing they were made in unsafe conditions, leading to the outbreak.
An Oklahoma doctor was charged with second-degree murder in the death of five patients after she allegedly over-prescribed dangerous opioids. Dr. Regan Nichols, 57, is accused of prescribing more than three million doses of painkillers between January 2010 and October 2014, KFOR reported.
The charges against Nichols were announced by Oklahoma’s attorney general on Friday, and an Oklahoma County judge also issued a warrant for her arrest. Nichols, an osteopathic physician working at Sunshine Medical Clinic, is accused of dolling out powerful prescriptions for patients in “horrifyingly excessive” amounts.
She allegedly prescribed a 47-year-old patient 450 painkillers, muscle relaxants and anti-anxiety drugs six days before the patient’s death. Prosecutors said 10 of her patients died of overdoses in a span of four years, with the charges for five of them stemming from a multi-agency investigation.
“Nichols prescribed patients, who entrusted their well-being to her, a horrifyingly excessive amount of opioid medications,” Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter said. “Nichols’ blatant disregard for the lives of her patients is unconscionable.”
Investigators believe that Nichols, who practiced medicine for more than 20 years and had her ability to prescribe dangerous controlled substances stripped in 2015, prescribed the five patients’ whose deaths she is charged in more than 1,800 opioids in the months leading up to their deaths.
In February 2012, investigators said, a 46-year-old patient was prescribed 240 painkillers and anti-anxiety drugs, despite not being by Nichols for a full medical evaluation since 2008. The patient died by March.
Martina Troy, who became addicted to opioids while under Nichols’ care, went to investigators with concerns about her prescribing practices, KFOR reported. At one point, Troy said she received over 500 pills a month, according to the report.
“I had times I almost wrecked my car getting back to her office to get a prescription,” Troy told the news site. “I had a couple times I woke up gasping for breath and slobbering and I knew I was very lucky that I hadn’t died.”
Martin Shkreli, the pharmaceutical entrepreneur vilified as the "pharma bro" for raising the price of a life-saving drug by 5,000 percent, will go on trial on Monday for what U.S. prosecutors called a Ponzi-like scheme at his former hedge fund and a drug company he once ran.
Prosecutors have accused Shkreli of lying to investors in the hedge fund and siphoning millions of dollars in assets from biopharmaceutical company Retrophin Inc to repay them. He has pleaded not guilty.
The trial, which will be heard by U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto in Brooklyn, is expected to last four to six weeks.
Shkreli, a boyish-looking 34, outraged patients and U.S. lawmakers by raising the price of anti-parisitic drug Daraprim to $750 a pill, from $13.50, in 2015, when he was chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
The charges that led to his arrest in December 2015 are not related to Turing but focus on Shkreli’s management at Retrophin and the hedge fund MSMB Capital Management between 2009 and 2012.
Prosecutors said Shkreli lied about MSMB’s finances to lure investors and concealed devastating trading losses from them. They said he paid the investors back with money stolen from Retrophin, which he founded in 2011.
The criminal case has drawn attention in part because of Shkreli’s refusal to lay low. He has continued to court the public eye, especially through social media, sometimes complicating his defense.
At a hearing last Monday, prosecutors refused to agree to Shkreli’s request to reduce his bail by $3 million, which he said he needs to pay taxes and legal bills, pointing to his own public boasts about his wealth.
Since his arrest, Shkreli has flaunted purchases including a World War II-era Enigma code breaking machine, a Picasso painting and unreleased albums by Wu-Tang Clan and Lil Wayne.
In April, he offered $40,000 to a Princeton University student who solved a mathematical proof. In May, he pledged on Facebook to pay $100,000 for tips leading to the arrest of the person who killed former Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich.
Shkreli was banned from Twitter in January for harassing a female journalist who wrote an op-ed piece for Teen Vogue criticizing President Donald Trump, whom Shkreli has supported.
Shkreli’s attention-seeking has at times exasperated his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, who urged Matsumoto last week not to give much weight to his client’s "preposterous statements."
Barry Cadden, co-founder of the New England Compounding Center (NECC), the now-defunct pharmaceutical company linked to a 2012 deadly meningitis outbreak, will be sentenced June 26 for his role in the spread of the disease.
Cadden was cleared by a jury in March of second-degree murder charges — likely avoiding spending the rest of his life in prison — but was convicted of multiple counts of fraud, conspiracy and racketeering. Cadden, who once was the president and head pharmacist of the New England Compounding Center, could still spend decades in prison.
Read on to find out more about this case.
What happened in 2012?
As many as 13,000 people nationwide may have received injections with contaminated medicine from NECC of Framingham, Massachusetts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated.
At least 700 people were sickened by fungal meningitis and other infections in 2012, and 64 people died. Still others live with chronic pain from the tainted injections.
The outbreak affected people in 20 states with Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee being the hardest hit.
Why would Cadden be responsible?
Prosecutors accused Cadden’s company of using expired ingredients and falsifying logs in an attempt to show that rooms had been cleaned when they were, in fact, not.
Prosecutors said Cadden and his employees knowingly shipped tainted steroids — usually prescribed to patients with back pain — across the country.
Following the outbreak, multiple instances of contamination — including standing water, mold and bacteria in the air and on workers’ gloved fingertips — were found.
Prosecutors also accused Cadden of running his pharmaceutical company in an “extraordinarily dangerous” way as he allegedly ignored sterility and cleanliness regulations in lieu of churning out product faster to make more money.
"It was preventable, but it happened because this man, Barry Cadden, decided to put profits before patients," Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Strachan said during the trial.
In turn, Cadden’s lawyers argued that he was not directly responsible for the unclean rooms; instead, the lawyers argued, supervisory pharmacist Glenn Chin was responsible for the rooms where the drugs were made.
Chin pleaded not guilty to similar charges. He is expected to face trial in September.
“As horrible as each of these stories is, there is nothing that shows that Mr. Cadden did something that the government can link to the death of that person,” attorney Bruce Singal said.
Cadden is expected to be sentenced June 26.
So what is he actually guilty of?
Cadden was acquitted in March 2017 of causing the deaths of the people infected. But a jury did find him guilty of some racketeering and fraud charges.
Jurors convicted Cadden of sending out the contaminated drugs but would not say he was guilty of purposefully misleading customers by providing them with contaminated products, according to the Boston Globe. The jury also refused to convict Cadden of willingly and knowingly mislabeling drugs.
The jury also cleared Cadden of charges that he defrauded the US Food and Drug Administration by using NECC as a pharmacy instead of a manufacturing center, the Boston Globe reported.
What could happen to Cadden and his company?
NECC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2012. At the time, it said it wanted to establish a fund to compensate those affected by the deadly meningitis outbreak.
By 2015, the company had more than 3,400 claims filed against it — including more than 1,000 claims from those who were seriously injured during the outbreak or relatives of those who were deceased.
A federal bankruptcy judge approved a $200 million settlement in 2015 that would compensate NECC’s creditors — including the victims.
Each of Cadden’s fraud and racketeering convictions carry a potential sentencing of up to 20 years in prison, but multiple sentences can often be served at the same time, the Boston Globe reported.
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Barry Cadden, former pharmacy executive and president of New England Compounding Center, arrives at the courthouse in March 2017. Then, he was acquitted of causing the deaths of 25 people who received contaminated steroid medication from his pharmacy.
(AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Cadden’s sentencing will be based on the nature of the crime, his personal character and his lack of a criminal record, according to the Boston Globe.
But prosecutors are hoping for a harsher sentence from the judge due to a quirk in the trial verdict.
Instead of simply checking “guilty” or “not guilty” when filling out their verdict slip, prosecutors said jurors wrote the numbers of those who thought Cadden was guilty or not of the 25 counts of murder he faced, according to Reuters.
"While they failed to reach unanimity on these racketeering acts, the jury’s verdict confirmed that the murder racketeering acts were proven by a preponderance of the evidence in this case, and can be properly considered at sentencing," prosecutors wrote in a motion filed after the verdict trial.
Prosecutors hope that the judge will take that into consideration during the sentencing later this month.
Is anyone else facing charges for the deadly outbreak?
Aside from Chin — who faces similar charges to Cadden — multiple other NECC employees may face consequences for the company’s role in the deadly outbreak.
Carla Conigliaro, the majority owner of NECC, pleaded guilty in July to illegally transferring assets after the outbreak. Her husband did the same. The pair was sentenced. They also had to pay fines.
Robert Ronzio, who was the company’s sales director, also pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the Food and Drug Administration. Ronzio is expected to be sentenced in September, WBUR reported.
Two pharmacists, Kathy Chin and Michelle Thomas, were cleared of any criminal liability by a judge in October, according to WBUR. The judge said that while the pair checked and shipped orders, they did not dispense the drugs.
Alla Stephanets, another pharmacist, was also cleared of similar charges but still faces a fraud charge, according to WBUR.
They’re already used by international spies and nosy neighbors. And one day in the future, drones may be used to save lives, Reuters reports. Sweden scientists tested whether a drone could be used to rush defibrillators to people suffering heart attacks.
The Karolinska Institute study found that drones beat ambulance time by about 16 minutes. Researchers sent drones to 18 locations within a 6.2-mile radius in Stockholm where EMTs had responded to cardiac arrests between 2006 and 2013; the ambulance vs.
drone arrival times were then compared. The idea is that bystanders would act as life-savers and grab the defibrillators. While no actual heart attack patients participated in the study, defibrillators are commonly found in public places and are "easier to use than a fire extinguisher," Jacob Hollenberg at Karolinska tells the Guardian.
Cardiac arrest is a leading killer worldwide, with only one in 10 people surviving an attack outside a hospital, per Reuters. "Every second is crucial," Hollenberg tells the Guardian.
Health officials in the Democratic Republic of the Congo said the Ebola outbreak in the African nation has been “brought under control” as the country has not recorded a new case of the virus in the last 21 days.
“At this stage, we can say that the spread of the epidemic has been brought under control and that’s thanks to the quality of national and international experts dispatched to the zone,” Congolese Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga told Reuters.
Ilunga added that authorities have confirmed four cases of Ebola in the northeastern Bas-Uélé province – up from two previously – and that three other cases are considered probable.
While the World Health Organization has not confirmed the health minister’s assertion that the virus’ spread is under control, it noted on Tuesday that WHO and its partners are “rapidly and effectively” coordinating a response.
“WHO and other partner agencies led by the Ministry of Health have secured and set up a base to coordinate their work and end the outbreak as quickly and as safely as possible,” WHO stated, noting the difficulties faced by the remoteness of the region and trouble with overland access.
The area of the outbreak, more than 300 miles from the DRC capital of Kinshasa, has very few passable roads and bridges open during this time of the year, so helicopters are required to bring teams and equipment to the town of Likati, where motorcycles take over. Health workers have already built two mobile labs, but a generator in one failed and had to be replaced.
The Congolese health minster’s assertions come just over a week after the DRC approved the use of an experimental Ebola vaccine known as rVSV-ZEBOV. But Congolese authorities and WHO are still deciding whether the small number of confirmed Ebola cases in the country warrants the time and logistical complexity of deploying the vaccine to the remote region of the country, formerly called Zaire.
The vaccine was developed during the last major outbreak of the Ebola virus, which began in 2014 in West Africa and caused a global panic. A WHO working group recommended the use of rVSV-ZEBOV in 2015 after a clinical trial in Guinea showed promising results.
There are currently 300,000 doses of the vaccine available after an agreement was reached between international vaccine organization Gavi and Merck, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures rVSV-ZEBOV.
This is the eighth epidemic of Ebola in the DRC since the discovery of the virus in 1976, and comes just three years after an outbreak in West Africa killed more than 11,000 people and created a global panic. It is still unclear how Ebola outbreaks begin, but researchers theorize that it could come from people eating infected pieces of “bush meat” – the meat of primates and other wild animals sold in local markets – or from bats carrying the virus.
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In this undated colorized transmission electron micrograph file image made available by the CDC shows an Ebola virus virion.
(Frederick Murphy/CDC via AP, File)
Deploying the vaccine — along with the laboratories, equipment and personnel needed to administer it — is estimated to cost around $14 million. That is a hefty price tag for the second-poorest nation in the world. The nation also struggles to contain an ongoing ethnic conflict between the DRC’s Tutsi-controlled government under President Joseph Kabila, who refused to leave office at the end of his term last year, and a Hutu rebel group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
Amid militia clashes and numerous violent protests – one in December left more than 50 people dead – the DRC saw more people leave their homes in 2016 than anywhere else in the world. According to the most recent report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, 992,000 people fled the violence in 2016, compared to 824,000 in Syria, 659,000 in Iraq and 653,000 in Afghanistan.
A custodial worker is providing more than just clean rooms to patients in Arizona, as he’s tapped into his musical talents to help bring them peace during their stay. Two hours before his shift starts at Banner Desert Medical center and Cardon Children’s, Rolando Maaba comforts patients, staff and visitors with his piano playing, Fox 10 reported.
“Music is very, very important, especially when I work in a hospital,” he told the news outlet. “I can help some people, the patients and their relatives… I give them something to be calm, and to forget the problem and some healing. Music is very important. Especially for that.”
Maaba, who is from the Philippines, taught himself how to play the piano more than 40 years ago. His melodies have become a staple for staff and helps ease the stress of their jobs.
“When I don’t hear, I’ll peek out and see what’s going on,” Tricia Bruce, a patient navigator with the American Cancer Society told Fox 10. “Every day it’s an enjoyment. When he comes on his shift, I know and I make sure my door is open just so I can get that peaceful afternoon.”
CHICAGO – Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said on Wednesday that his office sued five drug manufacturers, accusing them of misrepresenting the risks of prescription opioid painkillers, helping fuel a drug addiction epidemic.
The suit by Ohio came amid a growing number of lawsuits by state and local governments against drugmakers and distributors seeking to hold them accountable for the opioid crisis.
A surgical team sprang into action last week to save the life of a beloved stuffed animal that belongs to a special needs patient. The team at Winnipeg’s Concordia hospital swiftly worked to stitch and patch a number of holes in 23-year-old Dean Heber’s wolf stuffed animal, CBC reported.
Heber’s mother, Michelle, told the news outlet that her son is non-verbal, and has developmental delays, epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and that the toys provide him with comfort during his hospital stays. For the past few months, he’s been cared for in Concordia’s intensive care unit while he battles recurring pneumonia, CBC reported.
