Lifebox Australia and New Zealand (Lifebox ANZ)

Strengthening anaesthesia and surgical safety

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Lifebox Australia and New Zealand (Lifebox ANZ) is a consortium of partners working to strengthen anaesthesia and surgical safety, with a particular focus in the Asia-Pacific region.

Lifebox ANZ partners – Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA), the Australian Society of Anaesthetists (ASA), Interplast Australia & New Zealand (Interplast), and the New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists (NZSA)  – raise funds and implement safer surgery and anesthesia programs. 

Lifebox ANZ has supported safer surgery and anesthesia projects in Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Laos and most recently in Bangladesh. 

Lifebox ANZ Partners

 

Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists

Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists

The Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) is one of the largest specialist medical colleges in Australia and New Zealand, and the region’s foremost authority on anaesthesia, pain medicine and perioperative medicine. Find out more. 

Australian Society of Anaesthetists

Australian Society of Anaesthetists

Established in 1934, the Australian Society of Anaesthetists is a peak not-for-profit representative body of anaesthesia in Australia. With over 3,400 members across Australia, it is a member-funded organisation dedicated to supporting, representing and educating anaesthetists to ensure the safest possible anaesthesia for the community. Each year in Australia, anaesthetists have a crucial involvement in almost four million operations. Find out more.

Interplast

Interplast

Interplast sends teams of volunteer plastic and reconstructive surgeons, anaesthetists, nurses and allied health professionals to provide life-changing surgery and medical training in 17 countries across the Asia Pacific region in partnership with local organisations, including hospitals, universities and local NGOs. Find out more. 

New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists

New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists

The New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists (NZSA) represents and supports the community of medically registered anaesthetists in New Zealand and promotes the safety of their patients. Its mission is to serve its membership through advocacy, community connection and educational opportunities whilst promoting sustainable processes.

Lifebox was launched in 2011 with the simple aim of providing pulse oximeters to operating rooms that lacked this critical monitoring device. A pulse oximeter is the only piece of equipment included on the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist and yet, at Lifebox’ s launch, it was estimated that 77,000 operating rooms around the world lacked this essential piece of medical equipment. The Lifebox-Smile Train pulse oximeter has been specifically designed for use in low-resource settings – with robust construction and rechargeable batteries that stay on even when the power fails. To date Lifebox has distributed more than 34,000 pulse oximeters to anesthesia providers around the world for vital patient monitoring.

Lifebox now works across three core pillars of safer surgery – improving anesthesia safety, reducing surgical infection rates, and strengthening surgical teamwork. By working alongside local partners, Lifebox provides the training and tools needed to save lives through safer surgery and anesthesia. All of this work is rooted in the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist – a simple communication tool that has been proven to reduce complications and deaths from unsafe surgery by up to 40%.

 

“After doing this course,I know how to use pulse oximeters. I have learnt what hypoxia is – before giving anaesthesia, the Sp02 is 95. If it is 94% I will manage the hypoxia. If I maintain the surgical checklist in the theatre, I will protect the patient and ensure it is the right operation and the right side of the patient. This course was very useful, all technicians and anaesthesiologists should be given this training course.”
Dr Bullet, Dhaka, Bangladesh, Lifebox pulse oximetry workshop

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Support safer surgery and anaesthesia with a tax-deductible donation to Lifebox ANZ.

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Get involved in making anaesthesia and surgery safer worldwide. Below you'll find resources to get you started. If you need support, reach out to [email protected].

Lifebox ANZ supported the global Lifebox COVID-19 response with the distribution of 100 pulse oximeters across Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati, and elsewhere for frontline use. Pulse oximeters are a crucial tool in the detection and triage of COVID-19 patients. “Silent hypoxia”is a defining feature of the disease, with patients slowly starving of oxygen without the usual shortness of breath that would see them seek care. By the time many COVID-19 patients are having trouble breathing – they are already critically ill. The best tool to detect these patients is a pulse oximeter.

“Lifebox ANZ is supporting Lifebox’s COVID-19 response, with the distribution of pulse oximeters and resources to health care providers across the Pacific. Pulse oximeters are essential for the detection and ongoing care of COVID-19 patients. We are hugely proud of this work to support patient care during the pandemic.”
Cameron Glover, CEO Interplast Australia & New Zealand

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