El Salvador 2022: Elena Maricela Majano, MD | Bernes Medical Sleep and Neurology Medicine Private Center

Delegate: Elena Maricela Majano. MD

Affiliation: Bernes Medical Sleep and Neurology Medicine Private Center.

Short Bio: Dr. Elena Majano / Medical Director of BERNES MEDICAL / Internal Medicine, Neurology & Sleep Medicine Specialist.
Studies: Inselspital – Universitätsspital Bern, Switzerland and Neurosciences Institute, Favaloro Foundation, Somnos Private Sleep Medicine Institute and “Dr. Alfredo Thomson” Neurology Center attached to former French Hospital, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Dr. Majano currently directs the first private practice dedicated exclusively to the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders in El Salvador.

2012: Delegate for El Salvador.
2015: Winner of Distinguished Activity Awardees
2017: Winner of Distinguished Activity Awardees
2018: Winner of Distinguished Activity Awardees

2019-2020-2021: WSD Honorable Mentions

Since 2016: World Sleep Day® Committee member

Since 2016: Regional Coordinator/Central America, Caribbean
Since 2012, El Salvador is part of the WSS.

Our mission at Bernes Medical Sleep Center is to promote Good Sleep and raise awareness about the importance of sleep in life, for people of all ages, emphasizing the benefits of good sleep practices and warning about the risks that sleep disorders bring to people’s lives.

Our Goal: 7 to 8 hours of quality sleep are possible, and El Salvador has sleep specialists, diagnostic tools, and treatments to achieve it.

This 2022 is a very special year for El Salvador and for me personally, because we are celebrating 10 years of belonging to the WSS and of celebrating WSD. I feel very grateful and pleased with the work we have done in these 10 uninterrupted years of working for a good night’s sleep.

I thank the WSS for all their support in this crusade, especially Dr. Antonio Culebras and Dr. Liborio Parrino, for their help and trust in El Salvador and the Central American region.

As a special gift on this 10th anniversary, I was given a very special gift (which you can see in the photos below) painted by a good friend and colleague, a pediatrician and vascular surgeon: Dr. Jorge Guevara. Thanks, my dear friend!

The painting is called: “Fragments of a forgotten dream” (Fragmentos de un sueño olvidado)

 

Activity: This year, strategic alliances were created for the promotion of WSD 2022, in order to have much more coverage and make the public more aware about sleep disorders.

Our allies were:

 

  1. Bernes Medical Medicina del Sueño, El Salvador.
  2. Laboratorios Medfarma, El Salvador.
  3. Laboratorios Megalabs, El Salvador.
  4. Laboratorios M&D Pharma, Roche, El Salvador.

 

This 2022, our already traditional “Good Sleep Week” became “March: Good Sleep Month”.

The activities aimed at promoting the World Sleep Day based on this year’s slogan, were carried during all March 2022.

Because in my country, there are still restrictions due to the Covid-19 Pandemic, this year in person activities with the general public could not be carried out, but rather, medical conferences in clusters, in order to achieve the goal of explaining the three components that make up the WSD slogan this 2022, and respecting health regulations were coordinated and carried out successfully and safely for each professional who attended.

The topics that were addressed in these medical conferences were:

  1. Drowsiness and insomnia: cardinal symptoms of sleep disorders.
  2. Parasomnias: OBE, lucid dreams and their relationship with anxiety and bad sleeping habits.
  3. Pain and its negative impact on sleep.
  4. Burnout in medical staff: How did we get to this?

As it has been a tradition since 2012, The Bernes Medical Banner for WSD 2022 and our ¨Chocolate of good sleep 2022¨ were designed, the last one as a “thank you” souvenir for supporting media (radio and television programs) that interviewed us and allowed us to spread the World Sleep Day 2022 celebration nationwide.

The logo of this WSD 2022 was specially designed for the occasion, with the sole purpose of making the meaning of the slogan visibly clear: “Quality Sleep-Sound Mind-Happy World.”

In the attached photos bellow you can see the logo, and this is its meaning:

  1. Quality Sleep: was represented by the classic eye movements of REM sleep. All the stages that make up the architecture of sleep are vital, unique, and necessary for good sleep and rest, but it is in REM sleep where we “wash” emotions and strengthen knowledge and skills.
  2. Sound Mind: advised by my friends and colleagues from the Psychiatry area, we analyzed that a good REM sleep is vital to be able to have adequate mental health, that is why the waves of the ocular activity of this stage of sleep make up the paths of the brain (brain’s circumvolutions). The brain “rests” on a green color state of mind, which in psychiatry means good mental health.
  3. Happy World: I deeply believe that if as a human race we have good mental health accompanied by a good quality of sleep, we have the ability to and we can organize ourselves into being more empathic, supportive and inclusive societies, calling on each other to work together with a single common goal: a better and happy planet Earth, since there is no other place to move to.

That is why the green color “paints” all the countries in the world.

The blue color obviously represents our oceans, clean and free of contamination, providing a safe home to our incredible aquatic life. This is the third component of our logo in this WSD 2022.

  • Our promotional button was designed alluding to the World Sleep Day 2022
  • Television program interview: ¨Viva La Mañana¨ the morning program with the largest national audience rating interviewed me to promote WSD 2022. It has become a tradition.
  • 3 podcasts were held throughout March to promote The WSD 2022.These podcasts were aimed at the general public.
  • This 2022, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the celebration of WSD, one of the two newspapers with the largest circulation in the country once again granted us an extensive article on the importance of good sleep. (See photos below)

 

On Friday, March 18, the keynote conference about WSD 2022 was held.

It was attended by 94 medical professionals from different specialties , medical residents and medical students.

This event took place in the Convention Center of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in San Salvador, under the strictest protocol of sanitary measures due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. It was a very special and emotional night, since it was the first face-to-face event for medicine professionals held after the quarantine of the year 2020. Many of the medical colleagues who attended had not seen each other for 2 years or more, which generated an ideal environment to celebrate good friends’ reunion and promote good sleep.

The evening was enlivened by one of the most famous rock bands in Spanish from El Salvador: Taxi Driver. Its singer and leader is a medical specialist in adolescent health, who works for the Health Ministry, and had a leading role in fighting the pandemic. It was a truly amazing night!!!

 

Key topics of the conference:

  1. History and importance of World Sleep Day.
  2. Development of the Slogan for 2022.
  3. Characteristics of quality sleep, and how to achieve it.
  4. The consequences of poor sleep.
  5. Good sleep routines and the 10 sleep commandments were reinforced.
  6. Benefits of good sleep on mental and cognitive health. Direct relationship of insomnia on the development of Alzheimer’s Dementia.
  7. CoronaSomnia: the new pandemic in the fourth wave of Covid-19.
  8. The Glymphatic system and its importance
  9. To dream of what “that” ideal society would be like that could lead to a happy world, based on rested individuals, without anxiety, without stress, making the best decisions for the benefit of all and very much in keeping with the times we live in: “dreaming with peace for all of us.”

 

Location: San Salvador, El Salvador.

Date of Activity: The complete month of March 2022.

Submitted By: Elena Maricela Majano. MD