AmeriCares & ASP Partner To Fight Infection in Tanzania

In August 2011 AmeriCares delivered a shipment of CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution and trays to Bugando Medical Centre (BMC), a teaching and referral facility that serves a catchment area of 14 million people in Mwanza, Tanzania. The donation was the first shipment of a three-year commitment from Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) to provide CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution and trays to BMC in support of AmeriCares Health Worker Safety Initiative (HWSI). Among the objectives of the HWSI is to protect Bugando’s nearly 2,000 healthcare workers and medical students from nosocomial infection and disease. The CIDEX^®Activated Dialdehyde Solution donation has hugely impacted liquid chemical sterilization and high-level disinfection practices in the hospital, especially in the Operating Theater, Intensive Care Units, and Endoscopy Unit—improving conditions at the hospital for both health workers and patients.

“We received this request from Johnson & Johnson Corporate Contributions last year and our leadership knew this would be a great opportunity for ASP to help raise the standard of care in Tanzania as well as demonstrate our global commitment to support those in need of infection prevention solutions,” Liz Allison, ASP’s Healthcare Compliance Office explains. “By partnering with our CFO Dan Scavilla from a finance perspective and collaborating with ASP’s Supply Chain team, we were able to support this important donation.”

Although an essential product for sterilization of medical instruments, CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution is rarely available in Tanzania’s government medical stores, and it must therefore be purchased by the hospital on the local market. However, with BMC’s constrained budget, the hospital is frequently unable to purchase an adequate supply of high-level disinfectants, which are very expensive to procure locally. This shortage places health workers at risk of infection from untreated instruments, and leads to a reduction in the amount of patients served by these units, as the hospital lacks alternatives for high-level disinfection.

The unit most affected by this shortage is Endoscopy. Thanks to the recent donation of CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution from ASP, BMC’s Endoscopy Unit has doubled the numbers of patients they are able to serve each week. Dr. Mheta, the head of the Endoscopy Unit at BMC explained, “This donation of CIDEX^® [Activated Dialdehyde Solution] is very important to our unit because now we are sure of the availability of disinfectant for the sterilization of gastroscopy instruments.

Thanks to this donation, we can diagnose more patients than before, as our schedule will not be interrupted by the erratic supply of disinfectants.” Before receiving the shipment of CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution, BMC patients would have to wait a month or more for an appointment in the Endoscopy Unit, which served 25 patients or less per week. Since the CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution arrived, BMC’s Endoscopy Unit has increased that number to an average of 40 to 55 patients per week.

One BMC patient who has already benefitted from this recent donation of CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution is Pilly Limanya, a 40-year-old teacher who suffered from epigrastric pain for six months. Pilly was scheduled to undergo endoscopy at BMC to diagnose her condition, but due to of a backlog of patients she was not slated for the procedure until November 21st, 2011. However, with the arrival of the donated CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution, sterilization of instruments at the hospital has sped up greatly, making it possible for doctors to move Pilly’s diagnostic procedure up to October 18th. As a result, Pilly received a diagnosis for her condition a full month ahead of her originally scheduled procedure. Pilly was very happy to finally obtain treatment for her painful condition, which will enable her to return to her normal life. Pilly explained, “Now that I have received my treatment earlier than the original appointment I will be able to go back to my work.”

AmeriCares is extremely grateful for ASP’s three-year commitment to providing Bugando Medical Centre with CIDEX^® Activated Dialdehyde Solution for sterilization of medical instruments in support of the Health Worker Safety Initiative. The generosity of ASP in providing this essential product will support the health and safety of BMC’s health workers and patients, and permit the hospital to serve more people safely and efficiently in the years to come.