Secret of the Falkland burn bags

Press, 16 July 1982, Page 14

Secret of the Falkland burn bags

By

GLENYS ROBERTS,

“Sunday Times,” London

Television viewers have been curious to note that soldiers burned in the Falklands returned to Britain with plastic bags on their hands. The bags in fact mark the return of a nineteenth-, century treatment using an antiseptic, hypochloride — a relative of household bleach — as a healing, sterilising, and pain-relieving agent. This is what the bags contain. It was used in Custer’s Indian campaign and in the First World War on burns and wounds, saving thou-

sands of limbs from gangrene. But during the Second World War it was generally replaced by anti-biotics. The plastic bags used in the Falklands were organised at 24 hours notice by John Bunyan, a former surgeon in the R.N.V.R. and a descendant of the Bunyan of Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan, who is now consultant to the Shriners Burns Hospital in Galveston, Texas, pioneered non-friction bags rather than bandages for the dressing of burns. Resistance to returning to

antiseptics continued up to a ■ couple of years ago wheh it was discovered that one of the materials in the phagocytes — the white blood cells which fight infection — is hypochloride. Yet today only half a dozen English hospitals use it and specialist burns units such as East Grinstead continue to resist it Bunyan has had to go abroad for recognition until the recent hostilities. Curiously, another latter-day pioneer of hypochloride treatment is Professor Car-

los Cindono in Buenos Aires. Its cheapness and readyavailability makes it particularly suitable in the Third World. The hypbchloride used professionally is slightly different from domestic versions, but household bleach is sufficiently similar to be very effective on burns. For adults, Bunyan recommends neat bleach which

should be washed off after 10 minutes following which there will be no pain and healing will follow. For children, it should be diluted, one teaspoonful to a pint, before application. It cleans wounds, reduces swellings, and stems bleeding, he says. “It has proved, nothing short of miraculouson burned children in. Galveston.” . ’ •