As Canada and the world deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, a critical shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) has become one of the greatest challenges for health care professionals.
To address the shortage of PPE NorEnvironmental International is offering to establish a processing center, NoreDecon, intended to enable the repeated decontamination of personal protective equipment (PPE) used throughout the medical care industry and by first responders.
Equipment decontamination will include, but not limited to, N95 masks, surgical masks, gowns, goggles, face shields and foot coverings. NorEnvironmental is a North Bay company founded by Louis Brown, specializing in the development of first responder and military safety systems.
“We designed equipment for hospitals and trained the personnel on decontamination procedure,” said Brown in a release.
"The NoreDecon PPE decontamination centres objective is to decontaminate as many as 100,000 N95 masks per day for hospitals throughout Ontario," said Marc Udeschini, President, Nor Environmental Inc.
"Without adequate supplies of N95 masks, front line medical personnel are at risk of contracting COVID-19."
The system uses hydrogen peroxide vapor (HPV) in a sealed room with the contaminated PPEs.
Udeschini says they have been in touch with medical officials from across North America about their technology and how it could help.
"Requests from all levels of the healthcare system are seeking solutions to reduce the burn rate of PPE materials and NorEnvironmental has a recognized system to help reduce the pressure and can begin immediately," he said.
"It is a critical issue that healthcare professionals can be assured of an adequate supply of PPE and with global supply chains from manufacturers of equipment being restricted from exporting their PPE, Canadians are depending on others for their supply."
PPE materials will be gathered at each health center (HC) and transported to the NoreDecon regional processing centre which Udeschini believes can be in operation within weeks.
