Razionale

In May 2012 (on 20^th and 29^th)  severe earthquakes hit EmiliaRomagna, causing huge damages to infrastructures, factories, houses and 30 casualties.

Gambro Medolla Distribution Center & manufacturing plants were seriously damaged: key priority was continuity of supply lifesaving devices for ESRD patients in, since about 20.000 dialysis patients in 1000 clinics in Italy were potentially at risk of interruption in medical devices supply. 

Recovering medical products trapped inside Gambro DC, became absolute priority both for Gambro and for Italian National Health Service (NHS).

Casistica e Metodi

A crisis taskforce composed by NHS, SIN (Italian Society of Nephrologists), Assobiomedica (Italian Trade Association of Medical Devices), ANED (Italian Association of ESRD patients) and Government was established.

Actions were launched in order to ensure dialysis patients community with medical supplying:

1. Prioritization of intervention: rescue of urgent products from DC and necessary machineries for immediate restart of spare parts and disposables production
2. Activation of temporary DC in Varese
3. New design for disposables to be produced with a limited production
4. Engagement of stakeholders: taskforce directly involved in available stocks continuous monitoring among Hospitals and mutual clinic-to-clinic exchange depending on daily needs
5. Employees support (through Social plan and focused initiatives)

Risultati

1. Despite severity of the event crisis was solved with no patients left untreated
2. all products stored in damaged Gambro Dasco DC  were extracted and distributed;
3. 3 temporary plants, manufacturing devices and disposables,were activated and are still running
4. all employees were back to work in few months.

Conclusioni

Disasters of such magnitudes, when affecting industrialized areas, could cause severe consequences, especially in case of lifesaving-machines manufacturing sites.

Thanks to an immediate reaction, no dialysis patient was damaged by this extremely challenging situation.

Lessons learnt brought Gambro to adopt different risk management measures:

1. Dual source for any critical functions (manufacturing, distribution, IT, etc.).
2. New plant in Medolla redesigned with extended vulnerability assessment.