Lifebox - Saving Lives through Safer Surgery
Founded in 2011 by surgeon and author Dr Atul Gawande, along with leading medical professional institutions: the Association of Anaesthetists, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and the World Federation of Societies of Anaesthesiologists. Lifebox is the leading NGO addressing unsafe surgery and anesthesia in low- and middle-income countries.
With a robust monitoring and evaluation system, Lifebox works closely with partners to provide the tools and training to surgical teams in LMICs to improve anesthesia safety, reduce surgical infection, and strengthen teamwork in the operating room. Lifebox’s flagship program developed a low-cost and low-resource-adapted pulse oximeter for monitoring patients during anesthesia, and over 32,000 pulse oximeters have been distributed to date.
In 2016, Lifebox piloted Clean Cut, a quality improvement program, in Ethiopia, that aims at reducing surgical site infections (SSIs). Our first five sites to implement the program have seen a 30% reduction in SSI rates. The program is based on the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist.