GENERAL POLICIES | Wounds Africa

WoundsAfrica: Policies

§1Purpose and disclaimer

WoundsAfrica is the publisher of the educational website www.woundsafrica.com. The website is aimed at healthcare personnel who work with wound care. The website's purpose is to improve the standard of wound care in Africa, especially in regions with minimal resources.

Disclaimer: This web site is provided for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute providing medical advice or professional services. When a reader chooses to apply some of the treatment methods discussed on this website, they are doing so at their own disgression and responsibility. Many of the treatments discussed here have not been evaluated for their safety and efficacy. Because of limited resources in many parts of Africa, there is often a need for improvisation. While we discuss these improvised methods this does not mean that we recommend you to apply these yourself.

§2 Mandate

The website www.woundsafrica.com is accessible for free to all healthcare personnel in Africa or anywhere else in the world. The content should be as practically orientated as possible, and we aim to keep the site as updated as possible.

Paradoxically, many practices in wound care are still not scientifically validated. The majority of procedures in wound care are based on expert opinion and personal experience. This applies, in particular, to wound care in areas with little resources. We ask you to bear this in mind when you read our recommendations.

WoundsAfrica sends out regular newsletters via email or social media to our readers who subscribe to this service. The newsletters contain information about a broad spectrum of wound care - from details about educational arrangements, public campaigns, and product-specific information.

The contents on www. woundsafrica.com shall include standard of care guidelines for various wound care challenges - from chronic ulcers to acute trauma wounds. In addition, the website provides a comprehensive overview of most wound care products available today.

WoundsAfrica will also contribute to workshops, congresses, and other educational arrangements dealing with wound care.

§3 Organization

The board of WoundsAfrica consists of a head of the board and two board members. All three members of the board are chief editors of the website. The board of WoundsAfrica is identical to that of Wounds Norway. The board can make final decisions when at least two of the three board members are in place, as long as the head of the board is attending. When voting, a simple majority count is used.

§4 Economy

WoundsAfrica is a non-profit organization. Income revenues cover office rent drives non-profit. Revenues cover rental expenditures for office space, salary for contributors, electricity, insurance, internet/telephone, multimedia tools, web hotel, compensation for external consultants, and travel associated with congresses/workshops.

WoundsAfrica is dependent on income from sponsors or advertisers. Both sponsor activities and advertisements on the site are marked as such. Current sponsor amounts are either 5000 Euro/year or 2000 Euro/ year, depending on the company's size. The costs of placing advertisements on the website are specified under the chapter " advertising on WoundsAfrica."

§5 Ethical aspects

WoundsAfrica will quite frequently name a specific product and does not only write about product groups. One of the major challenges in wound care today is that many caregivers are confused about the wide variety of available products. To clarify some aspects of the treatment, we will sometimes highlight a product that, in our opinion, stands out within the same product group. We aim to always mark this in the text based on our ( or others') personal experience. WoundsAfrica will not write a negative review of a product unless there are scientifically valid reasons for doing so.

When WoundsAfrica highlights some products before others, this can easily be seen as a conflict of interest, especially when we receive funding from sponsors and income via wound care-related advertisement campaigns. We have, therefore, clear ethical codes of conduct which are specified below. We also expect the same conduct regulations from all partners working together with us.

All board members also work in public hospitals, which can lead to conflicts of interest. It is, therefore, a priority that these two roles are clearly kept separate. All negotiations with sponsors, advertising companies, etc., will not be handled at our public workplace but are confined to our WoundsAfrica offices. None of the board members can be involved in public tenders for wound care-related products.

When meeting with sponsors or advertising companies/other collaborating companies, WoundsAfrcia is always obliged to inform about the different roles (public/private) that all members of the board have.

Product developments or research conducted in the public workplace are the intellectual property of the public employer ( Helse Fonna)and cannot be incorporated into the work of WoundsAfrcia without written consent by the public employer.

Alle commercially registered companies that deliver wound care products can become a sponsor/ advertise for/on the WoundsAfrica website as long as they have a defined ethical code of conduct. WoundsAfrcia withholds the right to deny a company to sponsor the site or advertise on the site if we feel that their ethical policies are not agreeable with ours.

All board members must inform their public employer that they have a role in WoundsAfrica and what this implies for both positions.

To what extent we write about a specific product is to be completely independent of whether a company is a sponsor of WoundsAfrica or whether a company has placed an advertisement on the site. When we highlight a specific product, this shall only reflect our personal opinion/ preferences and not be motivated by any economic incentive.

Sponsors are represented with logos on the website and newsletters. The number of logos for each company is identical for each company, and the placement within the text is spread as fairly as possible.

Sponsors/advertising companies have the right to inform WoundsAfrica about product news and arrangements they offer healthcare workers for educational purposes. WoundsAfrica reserves its right to use or not use this information according to how we deem most appropriate concerning our ethical code of conduct.

Sponsors/ advertising companies are not responsible for any text or images published by WoundsAfrica. These companies are only responsible for the content in their own advertisements or their own websites, which links may lead to.

In situations where WoundsAfrica discusses off-label use of a wound care product, we shall also clearly inform the reader about this aspect and underline that this is a practice not recommended by the producer of the product.

Visual materials like still-images and videos have an essential role in conveying information in wound care. All images where a patient can be identified can only be published with the consent of the patient or their custodian(s).

WoundsAfrica also uses social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The ethical guidelines mentioned above also apply to anything we publish there. We will not tolerate any inappropriate comments posted by readers on such media and reserve our right to ban such persons from WoundsAfrcia groups on such channels.

§6 Annual meeting

The annual meeting is obligatory according to Norwegian legislation. All board members have to attend, and the following topics have to be addressed: accounting, report, strategy, budget. The board members receive written invitations to the meeting minimum of 5 weeks in advance. Proposals/motions must be sent to the secretary minimum of two weeks before the annual meeting.

§ 7 Organizational policies and dissolution of the organization

Any changes concerning organizational policies and the organization's dissolution require all board members in place.