SBV shows its commitment to staff safety

nitially developed to manage the needs of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and acknowledged as a world first for a cash-in-transit company, the kit will provide SBV personnel with a very real "fighting” chance following injuries received on duty, says Mkhuseli Operations Director, Julian Fouché.

With extreme demands placed on emergency medical services; budget constraints and often ineffective service delivery, coupled with high levels of violent crime, motor vehicle accidents and other trauma related incidents, uncontrolled haemorrhage remains the leading cause of death following trauma injuries in South Africa. “We have all heard of the golden hour, and this can be critical in determining whether a person survives. With HemCon anyone can apply the dressing to the wound and stop the bleeding, which gives the patient more time to get to a place of advanced medical care”, says Fouché.

With the number of cash-in-transit heists experienced by SBV generally in decline over the past 12 months, other incidents do still occur, and injuries such as those from vehicle accidents are often more common than from small arms fire, explains SBV General Manager, Mike Shipton. He adds that although the project was not initially catered for in their original budget, “the holistic safety of our staff in the field needed to be taken into consideration and with that in mind our management team pulled together and managed to find the resources to make it happen.”

Although HemCon was developed with the premise of saving lives, Fouché suggests that there are also very real cost implications to take into account. “If the bleeding cannot be stopped and the patient goes into shock or organ failure, the additional costs of extended ICU or lengthy recuperation and rehabilitation, start to become exorbitantly expensive. Also, training of a single person is always an expensive investment for any company, and we hope to assist by making sure that personnel are able to return to active duty as soon as possible” adds Fouché.

Unlike traditional gauze dressings, HemCon wound dressings contain an ingredient called Chitosan, which is a naturally occurring; positively charged protein derived from shrimp shells. When the Chitosan protein comes into contact with blood the positively charged dressing attracts the negatively charged red blood cells, becoming very “sticky” and creating an adherent seal over the wound site which stops the bleeding. HemCon dressings also provide an antibacterial barrier, whilst actively killing off the bacteria that leads to secondary infection and can be used on patients taking anticoagulants or who suffer from blood thinning disorders.

“We have been using pressure and gauze to treat bleeding since we can first remember, but are still relying on the body's own ability to rapidly clot the blood. A traditional pressure dressing on a large high-volume arterial wound may often result in the patient ‘bleeding-out', while this new technology has a documented success rate of 97% in achieving haemostasis in around two minutes,” concludes Fouché.

Mkhuseli Trauma Products (Pty) Ltd is a South African registered company who acquired the exclusive distribution rights for the HemCon® range of products in South Africa and Africa. The wound dressings are manufactured by HemCon Medical Technologies Inc, in Portland, Oregon, and are now also used in the civilian market by emergency medical services personnel, hospitals, and in dentistry.