RIWKA HAGEN Medical Business Services, on behalf of the Hand Sanitiser Australia Project
The Hand Sanitiser Australia Project As the world, including Australia, recognised the emerging Covid-19 pandemic around mid-March 2020, private health care organisations quickly realised that they were ill equipped to safely manage clinical services with woefully inadequate supplies of PPE and hand sanitiser. Without significant local manufacture and the redistribution of PPE to other nations, we faced a dire situation in trying to maintain health services across the country. It was obvious that without market action, health services would not be able to continue to manage the care of especially vulnerable patients and placed staff health at risk also.
‘Practice Managers Network’ Facebook group mobilises to form project team A group of leaders from the Facebook group ‘Practice Managers Network’ quickly mobilised, implementing a project to ensure supply of medical grade hand sanitiser for medical practices around the country — including regional, rural and remote locations. The ‘Hand Sanitiser Australia Project’ was born. 50
The Health Advocate • AUGUST 2020
What the team noted was that significant price gouging of all PPE supplies was evident, as well as market flooding of poor quality, and non-compliant product. In an effort to support the private health care industry, this group sought to provide high quality supplies at the lowest possible cost. Anna Davidson, a group member, took up contact with Riwka Hagen, the administrator of the group, and Matt Gilchrist, another active group member. Anna’s professional networks included chemical manufacturers and she felt confident that she could encourage them to change their manufacturing focus and start producing hand sanitiser. She secured supply of the key ingredient — ethanol — and production commenced soon after. At the same time, Riwka communicated with the Facebook group to gather information from practices that needed hand sanitiser supplies, and Matt started working on the challenges related to distribution of the highly flammable supplies. John Roberts later joined the team in providing further project management support and a key communicator between the project team and the manufacturers.
