Madrid (AFP)
A Spanish association has developed a computer that recreates the symptoms of multiple sclerosis for its users to raise awareness about this neuro-degenerative disease that will lead to a global awareness day on May 30th.
"I have jumping cables, like my computer," said Gerardo Garcia, president of the Spanish Multiple Sclerosis Association, on the occasion of the presentation of the initiative on Wednesday.
Frustration at a slow loading time, a cursor jumping suddenly ... The "bugs" on the computer are comparable to those experienced daily by people suffering from multiple sclerosis on their own body.
The goal of the Spanish Multiple Sclerosis Association is to expose this computer in schools or hospitals and possibly auction it.
Multiple sclerosis attacks myelin, a substance that protects the nerve fibers, and disrupts the flow of signals sent to or from the brain.
Incurable, it is nicknamed "the disease with a thousand faces" because of its very varied symptoms: disorders of the speech, the thought, spasms ...
Translated on a computer, it turns off the screen, the equivalent of the loss of vision that affects some patients.
Or slows down or falls off the screen the mouse cursor, to symbolize the symptom of chronic fatigue.
"If you make the changes you need in the operating system to slow down, you get a fair enough equivalence of what is the body of a chronic sclerosis sufferer," he says. told Gerardo Garcia.
He himself, diagnosed in 1985 with this autoimmune disease, suffers from chronic fatigue and now moves in a wheelchair.
Multiple sclerosis, often diagnosed in patients aged 20 to 50 years, "is the leading cause of disability among young people, behind traffic accidents," according to the association.
The only existing treatments only slow down the development of the disease.
? 2019 AFP