Africa: New product simplifies wound care whilst reducing costs

Alakai Associates in conjunction with Phytoceuticals, a Swiss life science company that developed 1 Primary Wound Dressing (1PWD), have introduced 1PWD to the African health care market. The attributes of 1PWD will help address some of the challenges facing health care providers in developing countries, namely: tight budgets, a shortage of skills and capacity constraints.

1 PWD is a wound dressing specially formulated from a synergistically acting combination of Neem oil and St John’s Wort oil. This product is used in Europe to simplify wound care and enable quick and mostly pain-free dressing changes. In many cases dressing changes that would have been performed by a health care professional can be done by the patient or a family member at home, negating the costly and time - consuming visit to a health care centre.

Due to the 1PWD’s broad mode of action specific steps and/or products typically used during dressing changes, such as debridement, antiseptic wound cleansing and care of the tissue surrounding the wound can be reduced or even omitted. This simplification of the wound care process is applicable to a wide range of wounds at most stages of healing. This increases the compliance and reduces the chances of mistakes during dressing changes.

The economic benefits of 1 PWD include reduced time to perform dressing changes leading to additional capacity for the health care provider. Because 1 PWD combines most of the benefits provided by advanced wound care products, savings on stock holdings can be realized by reducing the amount and types of dressings that need to be held.


An audit at a Swiss Nursing Home saw significant savings in the monetary costs of the dressing changes, as well as the time taken to perform the dressing changes. In fact the time taken to perform the dressing changes was reduced by more than 50%. This led the researchers to conclude that “1 PWD used in conjunction with a cost-effective and appropriate secondary dressing offers clinical and financial benefits and the opportunity to simplify wound care procedures”.

In South Africa, Dr Alessandro Andreone, a surgeon at the burns unit at Durban’s Inkosi Albert Luthuli Hospital has used 1 Primary Wound Dressing on both burns and accident patients. He liked the fact that 1Primary Wound Dressing enabled a quick and pain-free dressing change and the initial pain typically disappeared within 2 days.

“ 1 Primary Wound Dressing clearly activates and supports the physiological wound healing process. The fact that the dressing change is pain-free, quick and can be performed by the patients or their relatives, simplifies our work tremendously. Compared to ointments that are often used in such situations, the spray application is ideal because the sensitive skin area is not touched during the dressing change. This simplification is very helpful and increases the compliance of the patients”, said Dr Andreone.

Partners are continuously being sought to carry out structured case studies and audits in community and hospital care settings to collect validated data on the clinical and economic benefits of using 1 Primary Wound Dressing.