Ice Bucket Challenge: Dubai residents join in as campaign gains steam

Dubai: Ice has been in fashion of late. Everyone from Bill Gates to Jennifer Aniston to Daler Mehndi and even lesser known celebrities have taken a bucket of ice and dumped it over their heads, all to show support and solidarity for the neurodegenerative disease, ALS.

If you hadn’t heard of it until last fortnight, you’re not alone. Most people had to look up the full form and read about it to understand fully the fuss being made on social media.

“It’s a brilliant idea,” says Dr Hakam Asaad, consultant neurologist, Mediclinic City Hospital Dubai. “Raising more money for the ALS association is great. In the West, $88 million have been raised.”

When it comes to neurological disorders, ALS is not that uncommon. Dr Asaad, during his fellowship training in the US, would see ALS victims often, once a week, on Mondays, as part of the ALS clinic for one year.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as Dr Asaad explains to Khaleej Times, is “when neuron cells in the spinal cord quit working”. “Imagine when your brain wants to move your arm but the message doesn’t reach the arm.”

The symptoms of ALS begin in the arm and leg. “Seventy five to eighty per cent of ALS patients start with complaints of hands feeling weak, twitching in the arm, spasms, cramps, fumbling, and falling down.”

Around 20-25 per cent of ALS patients are struck by Bulbar ALS, which is when the disease strikes the face muscles first creating difficulties in speech, causing slurring, etc.

Typically, ALS patients, once diagnosed, live for 3-5 years. There is no cure for ALS, Dr Asaad says. And as yet, there is just the one FDA-approved medication, Riluzole, which “extends the quality of life by several months at best”.

The exact cause or trigger of the disease is unknown. It could be because of a chemical, a virus, or your genes (familial ALS). Dr Asaad says the ALS patients he’s dealt with have been very unique. Without talking too much about specific cases, he says, dealing with an ALS patient, you realise how much you take for granted.

“Simple activities like walking, exercising, moving your arms, using your hands for eating and writing, climbing the stairs become difficult. You realize how much you take for granted,” he said.

Dr Asaad hasn’t yet come across an ALS case in Dubai, though he has seen videos of Bill Gates and George Bush take the challenge on his wife’s phone.

The New York Times said more than 1.2 million videos on Facebook were shared between June 1 and August 13, and the phenomenon was mentioned more than 2.2 million times on Twitter between July 29 and August 17.

Yusra Khan, 12th grader and head-girl of The Millennium School, Dubai, along with two of her friends Gayatri Mohan and Malavika Kurian, last Saturday got together at Malvika’s place and each of them underwent the trial by ice.

“I had just come back from India,” Yusra says. Gayatri, too, got back to the Emirates last Friday. She says: “I had heard about ALS in the 9th grade while helping a friend research Stephen Hawking.”

The friends got together after some amount of homework and research. Says Gayatri: “My friend Yusra messaged me saying I nominate you for the ice bucket challenge.” Trips to the grocery store ensued. With “two huge packets of
ice” bought, and plenty stored in their fridges, they headed to Malvika’s place.

And while it sounds like a picnic, the girls also read up on the disease. “My mum gave me the most blank look,” Yusra laughs, also perhaps speaking for several parents whose children have decided to go ahead with the challenge.

“But then she researched it up (sic) and that was it. I just believe if you can have a walkathon for cancer, what’s so wrong about a bucket of ice causing awareness about ALS and it leading to paralysis.”

For everyone else who may or may not have taken on the challenge yet, Friday morning 8 am at Kites Beach (behind Saga World), there are over 300 people so far who have pledged to be present with a bucket for the challenge -- using not ice though, but the more ecologically-savvy beach water. Recommended that you carry a towel and a change of clothes, not just the bucket.

nivriti@khaleejtimes.com