They call it the Windy City…

Lifebox is standing a little taller this week – approximately 46,000 times taller!  That’s the size of the American Society of Anesthesiologists membership, and you might have seen from our website that this anaesthetic colossus recently launched a campaign to support us.

ASA held their annual meeting in Chicago last week, and invited Lifebox along to meet some of their members and introduce the project.  They were expecting around 15,000 members and exhibitors – that’s called a party to dress up for.

So we flew away early Thursday morning from Oximetry HQ in London with brochures, articles, badges and our beautiful campaign video to a temporary new home in the McCormick Place convention centre.

The ASA works through its committee on Global Humanitarian Outreach to address the global crisis in anaesthesia.  They recognize that Lifebox is a tangible opportunity to support colleagues and patients ravaged by it every day.

We were thrilled to hear immediate past president Dr Alexander Hanneberg announce that “this is a very important initiative, and the ASA is committed wholeheartedly to seeing this gap closed.”

‘This gap,’ of course, is the life-threatening absence of pulse oximeters in more than 77,000 operating rooms in low-resource countries worldwide.  Every day, operations take place in circumstances that threaten the very lives of patients providers are working to save.

Another highlight: recently the entire department of anaesthesia at the University of Florida pitched together to raise money for Lifebox, and on the first day of the conference, head of department Dr Jerry Cohen presented Lifebox trustee (and ASA keynote speaker – check it out here) Dr Atul Gawande with a cheque for $33,700.  That’s enough to buy more than 130 oximeters!

We’ll have updates in the coming weeks – be sure to check back to hear more about When Lifebox Went West.