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Grant for Spinal Cord Injury Research

Submitted By: bthill
Date Submitted: 4-October-2007 2:25 pm
Status: Approved
Views: 4982
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A Winston Churchill Trust will enable Austin Health's Director of Rehabilitation Sciences Professor Mary Galea a "Travelling Fellowship" to investigate active rehabilitation programs for people living with spinal cord injuries.

Professor Galea will travel to the United States, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The Churchill Fellowships provide finacial support  to Australian Citizens to travel overseas and undertake study of a project that cannot be readily undertaken in Australia.

Professor Galea's ongoing research at the Rehabilitation Sciences Research centre, based at the Royal Talbot Rehabilitation Centre in Kew, concerns understanding movement and recovery following nervous system injuries.

"Through my research I hope to highlight the role of rehabilitation in improving function and quality of life, not only for people living with spinal cord injuries, but also for those with other nervous system diseases such as stroke"

Professor Galea is helping give rehabilitation new prominence by encouraging active exercise techniques such as electrical stimulation and treadmill training. These techniques encourage the nerve fibres spared by injury to 'sprout' and grow new connections with undamaged pathways.

"With these findings and those of other research teams around the world, there is now a real prospect of treatments for spinal cord injuries in humans".

"A great deal of the focus of medical research has rightly been in the prevention of disease and its acute management. It's not sufficent just to save lives, however".

"We need to ensure those people whose lives have been seaved can be helped achieve the highest level of function and quality of life".

Country Care hopes Professor Galea's research can find new or improved techniques to help all people affected by nervous system diseases.