Lifeline offered to patients with terminal illness

PATIENTS suffering from motor neurone disease in South Yorkshire will be better able to communicate with the donation today of two state-of-the-art devices.

By The Newsroom

Published 8th Jul 2014, 09:02 BST

The Lightwriters, worth £3,500 each, allow people who can no longer speak to type out thoughts which are spoken by a machine.

Joan Harris, 76, of Beauchief, Sheffield, who has the incurable degenerative condition, said: “I’ve been using a Lightwriter for months now and it is truly a lifeline. My speech is really unintelligible and I don’t know what I would do without it. It means I can join in conversations and not feel like a ghost in the corner.”

Masons in Sheffield have donated the machines.

Mel White, chairman of the MND Association in the area, said: “We will be able to loan these machines out to people living with MND in the South Yorkshire area time and again and that is an invaluable resource.”