‘Superman’ gives help to paralysed children

Spinal cord clinic opened by son of Christopher Reeve

The son of the late Superman star Christopher Reeve has opened the country’s first spinal cord rehabilitation clinic for paralysed children.

The actor’s 38-year-old son Matthew attended the official launch of Neurokinex Kids in Crawley, West Sussex, yesterday.

The clinic is the first of its kind in the UK and is part of Neurokinex Gatwick – the only affiliation to the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation’s NeuroRecovery Network (NRN) outside the US. Reeve won a Bafta for his role in the 1978 superhero film but was injured in 1995 after being thrown from a horse at an equestrian competition in Virginia.

He became quadriplegic, was confined to a wheelchair and relied on a portable ventilator for the rest of his life. This prompted him to campaign for more support for those with spinal cord injuries and set up the foundation to help improve their health and quality of life.

Before he died aged 52 in 2004, he also lobbied for human embryonic stem cell research.

The £300,000 centre has the capacity to treat 20 paralysed children a day and pledges to use the

“Someone is paralysed every eight hours in the UK”

latest scientific research to help them become more active.

The organisation believes young children who are paralysed are more likely to develop long-term health problems when they grow older but they are more receptive to activitybased rehabilitation.

In particular, locomotor training and neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) – treatments which the centre said were not available anywhere else in the UK or Europe – will be on offer.

Both are therapies which aim to stimulate nerve and muscle movement.

Locomotor training involves suspending the patient above a treadmill to practice standing and step- ping, which can improve their ability to sit and walk.

NMES uses pulses of electrical current to prompt muscle contractions.

Matthew Reeve, the foundation’s vice chairman of international development, said: “Since its inception, the goal of the NRN has always been to develop cutting-edge treatments so individuals living with paralysis could recover functions once thought to be lost.”

Someone is paralysed every eight hours in the UK, according to research from BackUp Trust.

SUPERBOY : Matthew Reeve with five-year-old patient Jasper Thornton-Jones, who is being treated for paralysis after a spinal stroke