CAIRO: It is a revolution by all means, said Czech scientist Vaclav Bauer while describing his new bandages that help wounds heal four or five times faster. You can put that bandage on any wound given that the surface is wet with distilled water at body temperature. Press it for 15 seconds and the bleeding will stop, Bauer told The Daily Star Egypt. Bauer showed us a 10x10-centimeter bandage that he called Bauer Bandage. The bandage itself does not look any different from regular bandages except that it has many white and dry layers of gauze and one black layer at the bottom. The black layer is mainly pure clean carbon, explained Mr Dustan Smolnik, managing director of Mada Pack, who translated for Bauer from Czech. When he began working on this invention, Bauer was thinking of how to transfer smoke to its original solid carbon state, said Smolnik, who was accompanying Czech Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Gladis on his visit to Egypt together with 19 other businessmen from May 11 to 17. The purity of the product is 99.999999999 percent, he went on. This means that it virtually cannot cause any infection. Moreover, it can be applied and changed every six hours on sensitive skin without any irritation. It also cleans wounds. Bauer said that all hospitals in Prague started using the new bandages being tested now on a large scale. It is now being tested in open-heart surgeries to stop the bleeding, he said. Also, it is great while the dentist is working with your teeth, said Bauer while showing me a CD-ROM on the applications of the new bandages. According to Bauer, the bandage helped improve some hopeless cases of skin cancer. It is the perfect product when it comes to bed soars and diabetic wounds, he claimed. Answering why such bandages have not been used more widely, the Czech scientist said that their patent is pending by the Czech Republic, the European Union and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Americans, with the cooperation of some scientists there, use them now in the military and for astronauts, he added. Three Egyptian medical companies are also set to try the product in a step to sell them in 300 pharmacies in a matter of months, Bauer added.
