Ondine Biomedical Group donates to FOCOS Orthopaedic Hospital
Founder and CEO of FOCOS Orthopaedic Hospital, Prof Boachie-Adjei was invited to Vancouver Canada to visit the Ondine Biomedical Group, pioneers of photodynamic therapy. Carolyn Cross, CEO of the group and her associates, invited Prof Boachie for a two-day visit to their office in Vancouver, Canada.
The invitation was based on their knowledge of what FOCOS has done in Africa so far; pioneering and expanding surgical care to patients with complex orthopaedic problems. It was after a gala organised in Vancouver on June 8th, which sparked their interest in FOCOS’ excellence in providing optimum healthcare delivery.
While there, Prof gave a presentation on the history on Focos and statistics in terms of the number of post op infections recorded over the course of 3 years at the hospital. The technical and biomedical personnel at Ondine Biomedical group also gave a presentation on their company, the technical and biomedical research on MRSAid and other photodynamic therapy products.
At the end, they were very impressed and agreed to sponsor project at FOCOS hospital; applying MRSAid™ products on our perioperative patients to reduce of surgical site infections. The MRSAid™ product has been used extensively in Canada, and is applied on all elective surgical patients at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH).
Prof Boachie also visited Vancouver General hospital and got a first hand demonstration of how the product was used in a patient who was waiting to undergo surgery. VGH has shown in their studies that MRSAid™ nasal decolonization system used in conjunction with Chlohexidine wipes lowers the infection rate by 40%.
The donation, worth about $50,000 included the laser light source device photosynthesizer kits and the probes will be applied at FOCOS “The application of the MRSAid™ will make us a pioneer in Africa and hopefully others on the continent will also follow suit,” Prof said. “On behalf of the board of directors of FOCOS USA and Ghana, we would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the leadership of Ondine Biomedical Group especially Carolyn Cross and her team for this generous donation and we will be working together to report the outcome of our treatment protocols in the future,” he added.
Ondine Biomedical is dedicated to the development of non-antibiotic anti-infective therapies for a broad spectrum of bacterial, viral and fungal infections. Ondine is the global leader in photodisinfection and photodynamic solutions. Photodisinfection causes a physical disruption of the microbial cell membrane through oxidative reactions, resulting in immediate cell lysis. The process has also been shown to eliminate a multitude of virulence factors, lending to a clinically observable anti-inflammatory effect.
Unlike antibiotics, which require hours to days to exert their effect, photodisinfection works instantaneously, destroying microbes upon light activation. The United States Food and Drug Administration and other regulating bodies have approved photodynamic therapies (using different photosensitizing drugs developed by others) for a number of proliferative diseases, including a variety of cancers as well as age-related macular degeneration, the primary cause of blindness in older adults. Periowave™ is currently under review for Premarket Approval by the US FDA.
Prof B with a nurse from VHG