It is often said that necessity is the mother of invention. And this what has motivated a 35-year-old Filipino nurse, Denver Chicano, to invent a wound dressing that doubles as a cure. He called his invention VERMAC, which means Vitro-Engineered Restorative Micro-cellulose Absorbent Covering.
VERMAC’s composition, he said, includes coco-cellulose, 3-5 percent; water, 95-97 percent; and monolaurin, 9 percent. All three comes from the coconut, he added.
Produced out of XYDERM Corporation Philippines, VERMAC documents provided by its inventor show the potentially trail-blazing home care product has won awards and recognition.
From the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital, Manila, Chicano’s invention received the Tatak PGH Nurse Innovator Award; Most Promising Intellectual Property Award conferred by the Philippine Chamber of Commerce, Inc.; 1st Place, Philippine Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons Research Competition; 1st Place, Philippine College of Surgeons’ 1st Inventions Competition, Creative Design Category; and Regional Winner LIKHA (Outstanding Creative Research), Department of Science and Technology National Capital Region. .
It has been tested, applied on many burn patients, and to soldiers’ wounds, too, the documents showed.
He claimed his invention has the nod from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2013, classifying VERMAC as a “drug home remedy.”
Chicano said he started developing his wound dressing in 2007 and completed it in 2008. The product went through randomized clinical trials at UP-PGH Manila’s Alfredo T. Ramirez Burn Center and at Zamboanga del Sur Medical Center, and was tested for hypoallergenicity and human safety by the Clinical Trial Management and Testing Associates, Inc., he said.
“As the clinical trials spread, it was proven effective. It passed through three processes for licensing. Then came the FDA classification,” he said.
VERMAC’s Certificate of Product Certification or CPR came out in Oct. 2013, he said. He said he sees patients every day, young and old, men and women, suffering excruciating pain from their burn wounds as attending nurses removed their dressing and, worse, scraping the flesh.
That was his job, too. Chicano was working then at UP-PGH, assigned at the Burn Center. So, he had personal knowledge of the untold pain the patients endured.
“There wounds are being scraped everyday to remove the pus, so I thought of developing this,” Chicano said, showing a VERMAC pack to the Manila Bulletin.
“So, I tried to develop a dressing product that, first of all, when it’s applied and removed from patients they will not feel pain, and they will be healed faster. It is because (with ointment) the way it hits them at the Burn Center, it is like the patients are in hell,” he recalled.
Another thing that triggered his compassion was the economic status of most of the patients, mostly indigents. “I saw at the PGH that patients are mostly the poor, such as carpenters; ordinary people; just employees without support if they are in the hospital. This is particularly so for burn patients,” he added.
Chicano noted that the standard being used in the Philippines for wound application is ointment. “But it is very expensive,” he claimed. “Patients have to buy the ointment at P4,000 aside from antibiotic injections. These cost them P15,000 a day.”
“How can they afford if the father is only a carpenter? How can they sustain their treatment? They cannot. The patients will just die,” he lamented.
His coconut-based wound dressing is less expensive, he claimed, citing an 8 inches by 11 inches dressing which costs only P1,080 for five days of application without changing it.
His wound dressing has sizes, too, for smaller wounds. “With ointment, you have to replace it every day,” he points out.
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