Tuesday 26 February 2008

Hope For Hayley

Forget your movie stars - apart from Remy, of course - and meet Hayley Okines, a little girl who suffers from Progeria, a rare illness which ages its sufferers eight years for every year of life. I saw a documentary about Haley in 2005 and was greatly impressed by her brave, chatty, matter-of-fact attitude. She is one terrific kid. Now nine years old, Haley has the body of a woman in her 70's. Time is running out for her, but there is a new drug which might offer a cure.... See Hope For Hayley on Wednesday 27 February at 9.00pm in Five TV's Extraordinary People series.

2 Comments:

At 4/6/08, Anonymous Anonymous said...

how old is hayley? we are doing a project on progeria and we would like some info. is there any way we could find her documentary online, for we do not live in the UK. thank you Coppola and Homoky

 
At 5/6/08, Blogger Unknown said...

Hi, Coppola and Homoky

If you pass your mouse over the title of this post, it shows "external link". Clicking on the title takes you to the Channel 5 TV writeup on Haley. There's more information there. (I've just checked to make sure the link still works. It does.) You could email them and see if a video is available.

Haley was 9 years old in the documentary, screened in February this year. She may have just turned 9, in which case that's still her age. She is quite "old" for a progeria sufferer.

She goes to a hospital in the USA for treatment. I can't remember it's name, but it specializes in progeria and has most of the known cases in the world visiting it for treatment and get-togethers. If you search Google US, you should find it. That hospital is leading the field and is the best source of information on progeria. You could also try Wikepedia.

Haley is such a cute kid that she's become almost a poster girl for progeria. So searching for "Hayley Okines" in Google could also bring results.

Best of luck.

 

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