Tyler Palmer, VP Marketing and Business Development, Essity

The Wound Care Learning Network had the opportunity to speak with Tyler Palmer, vice president of marketing and business development at Essity, about the company as well as its #Wound_Warriors campaign.

What does the name Essity mean, and how is it important to the company’s brand and mission?

The name Essity stems from the words “essentials” and “necessities.” Hygiene and health are the essence of well-being. Better hygiene and health are necessities for better lives, and our products and solutions play an essential role in improving well-being. Essity’s mission is to sustainably develop, produce, market and sell value-added hygiene and health products and services.

Essity is a leading supplier of wound care, compression therapy, orthopedics, and incontinence products and the manufacturer of brands such as Cutimed, JOBST, Leukoplast, Delta-Cast, Actimove, and TENA. Our Essity Health and Medical Solutions business in North America was bolstered by our 2017 acquisition of BSN Medical, a leading medical solutions company.

Through its #Wound_Warriors campaign, Essity is working to further the World Health Organization’s mission to help prevent antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in regard to fighting infections. This involves preventing the development of bacteria that develop resistance after a patient is treated with antimicrobial drugs. Why do you feel so passionately about this campaign and what encouraged Essity to be involved?

It is estimated that unless action is taken, the burden of deaths from resistant bacteria could increase to 10 million lives per year by 2050.1 We found this staggering.

As a key provider of wound care solutions, we want to join the fight against AMR.

The objective of Essity’s #Wound_Warriors campaign is to make healthcare professionals aware of the role of wound management in the global fight against AMR. Our goal is to recruit more wound warriors amongst our customers, partners, and stakeholders, educate them about AMR in wound care, and emphasize that we can support them in fighting AMR.

How does a clinician become a wound warrior? What are the right tools/methods to prevent infection and manage the wound, especially when trying to avoid AMR?

It is important to emphasize that appropriate wound care for infection prevention and management can play a powerful role in the fight against AMR.

At least 30% of antibiotic courses prescribed in the outpatient setting are unnecessary, which leads to increasing AMR.2 To be truly effective in the prevention of AMR, action must be taken at every level of wound care, from wound care specialists to wound care nurses.

Wound care specialists and nurses alike can become wound warriors by using effective, non-medicated dressing pads, swabs, round swabs, ribbon gauzes, and gels to treat hard-to-heal wounds, remove bacteria, and help promote the natural wound healing process.

How does Essity plan to fight AMR? What products do you have available that can help fight and manage infections in a patient?

Cutimed Sorbact products, manufactured by Essity, are non-medicated, antimicrobial wound care products for the management of clean, colonized, contaminated, and infected wounds. Instead of using chemically active agents, Cutimed Sorbact technology uses a physical mode of action to effectively bind and inactivate hydrophobic pathogenic bacteria and fungi and ultimately remove them from the wound. With every dressing change, bacteria are removed, helping to promote the natural wound healing process.

Cutimed Sorbact does not kill bacteria and therefore may help reduce the release of endotoxins from dead bacteria cells, which can inhibit the natural wound healing process. It can be used wherever microbes impair or hinder a wound’s healing and is available in dressing pads, swabs, round swabs, ribbon gauzes, and a gel to meet almost any wound care need.

As a non-medicated wound care product, treatment with Cutimed Sorbact technology has not been linked to the risk of developing antibacterial-resistant microbes. Importantly, Cutimed Sorbact technology and products are effective against hydrophobic fungi and bacteria—including antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria like methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

With Essity’s effort to fight AMR by offering free AMR kits to clinicians, how should a clinician go about attaining one of these free kits?

Clinicians and wound care specialists can visit our #Wound_Warriors homepage at the link here to claim their free antimicrobial resistant kit, which contains a free sample of Cutimed Sorbact and educational literature. In addition to the AMR kits, we encourage them to join the conversation on social media using the hashtag #Wound_Warriors.

If they have any questions, we encourage them to please contact us by email at HMS.Orders@essity.com or directly at 1-800-537-1063 and select option 1.

Is there anything else you believe the audience should know regarding the #Wound_Warrior campaign or Essity as a leader in addressing AMR?

In 2015, the World Health Organization identified AMR as one of the world’s most pressing drug resistance trends and launched a Global Action Plan on AMR.3

Through the #Wound_Warriors campaign, Essity is furthering this mission and encouraging wound care specialists and nurses to join in the fight against AMR. As mentioned earlier, Essity offers a comprehensive range of wound care products through its brands, Cutimed and Leukoplast, which effectively prevent and manage infection with no known risk of further contributing to antimicrobial resistance.

References

1. Review on antimicrobial resistance. AMR-Review. Accessed April 8, 2021. https://amr-review.org/

2. Fleming-Dutra KE, Hersh AL, Shapiro DJ, et al. Prevalence of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions among US ambulatory care visits, 2010-2011. JAMA. 2016 3;315(17):1864–1873. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.4151

3. World Health Organization. Global Action plan on antimicrobial resistance. WHO. Published May 2015. Accessed April 8, 2021. https://www.who.int/antimicrobial-resistance/global-action-plan/en/