In February 2020, Sanjeev was very concerned for his ENT colleagues, who were becomingly highly exposed to Covid. My wife is a dentist, and I too was now worried for my wife and the risks of the ‘Covid aerosol’ produced in dental surgeries.
We started discussing the prospect of a pandemic with our colleagues and friends. We were in daily contact with our colleagues in Italy and the Far East. To be told in late February by an Italian surgeon to always wear a mask was an incredible shock!
We both believed that our country was still in a position to prevent the ensuing terrible personal and financial disaster and clinical outcomes, which were ravaging Italy, Iran and Spain.
We also acknowledged the remarkable achievements of Healthcare workers and scientists in China, South Korea and Taiwan.
We then contacted some of the most senior UK doctors to help us define this approach, Within 48 hours, with the encouragement and support of several professors of medicine, we wrote our protocol (hyperlink to protocol), which was sent directly to the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary.
The UK suddenly went from a nation, which socialised to a ‘sudden lockdown’. We all were gripped by fear, isolation, and the unknowing. There appeared no solution.
Our first webinar ‘ Covid Ready ’ with David Nabarro, Steven Isserlis and Nick Hytner provides the contrast of David Nabarro’s advice on how we should prepare to live with the Virus, with the incredible challenges, which now face all Performing Arts.
We are extremely grateful to Professor Stafford, Sir Sararatnam Arulkumaran, and Professor Peter Barnes, Professor Gordon Stamp, and Professor Karol Sikora for their ongoing support and guidance. We also are fortunate to be supported by Luke Harding, Stephen Colegrave and Martin Halle. Politicians on both sides of the house took up our protocol.
Sapien Care has been launched as a platform for debate so that all of us can have a clear view of the challenges ahead for medicine and society.
SANJEEV SILVA
Consultant Head, Neck & Thyroid Surgeon
Sanjeev grew up in the UK and Canada and trained and qualified as a doctor at Kings College School of Medicine & Dentistry. He did his higher surgical training in Manchester and fellowship training in Head & Neck Cancer surgery in Australia, Royal Melbourne Hospital which focused on complex oral, salivary, thyroid and sino-nasal cancer as well as anterior skull base surgery and robotic surgery.
He was instrumental in setting up the ‘Shout at Cancer’ charity (https://www.
Sanjeev is co-director of Africamedica Ltd which uses technology to help facilitate the medical management of African patients and will be rolling out the process globally using tele medical platforms to connect patients with doctors in the UK, Greece, Israel, Thailand, Singapore and India.
After the Covid-19 pandemic Sanjeev teamed up with his good friend and colleague Nick Morris to develop protocols for the UK to mitigate against Covid-19. This naturally evolved into the Sapien Care Group, a medical education platform that seeks to bring the highest medical opinions and evidence base information to doctors and the wider interested pubic.
Prof Stafford Lightman FRS
Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol
Stafford Lightman is Professor of Medicine at the University of Bristol . He started his scientific career working on the interactions between adrenalin and opium-like compounds at the University of Cambridge and then went on to demonstrate how adrenalin cells in the base of the brain are important in regulating the hypothalamus – the centre that is important with many of our vegetative functions! He then went to Imperial College in London where he worked on how the stress response was regulated in the brain and how the brain itself then transmits these messages to affect the rest of the body. More recently he has developed a new concept of digital signalling of stress hormones as a way the brain can mathematically regulate messages going to different tissues in the body.
Stafford Lightman is immediate past-President of the British Neuroscience Association, a Fellow of The Royal Society and founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He was also the first Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuroendocrinology, the founding Chairman of the Pituitary Foundation and a Council Member of the Physiological Society. He has sat on several Research Councils, Wellcome Trust and European Research Committees and has Chaired the European Union Committee Review of Tertiary Education in East Africa. Professor Lightman has had a life-long interest in tribal people (ex-medical director of Survival International) and has a major interest in inter-relationships between art and neuroscience.
Nicholas Morris
Consultant Obstetricians & Gynaecologist
Nick has been a doctor for over 35 years, and has been a Consultant Gynaecologist for 24 years. Nick trained at St Mary’s Hospital Medical School, where Stafford Lightman taught him.
Nick was a WellBeing Training Fellow at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, a Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist in West London, and a Senior Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College.
Nick established in 1997, the first clinic in the UK to help and advise women who were victims of ‘Female Genital mutilation’ FGM. He contributed to the 2003 UK FGM act.
Nick is now in private practice in London, and is Chairman of the UK Friends of The Freddie Krivine Initiative, and a founding partner in Caretek Medical, an App based ‘Digital Doula’.
Nick is immensely proud to be part of ‘Sapien Care’, and to be working with Stafford, Jonathan and Sanjeev.