SBP 47 - Development of Banana Sap-based Antiseptic against common hemolytic bacteria and fungi infecting wounds

Ensuring that the health and well-being of many individuals in rural areas is safe, is an important endeavour in modern medicine. Resistance of microorganisms that infect wounds to treatments (i.e. Antiseptics and antibiotics) have been greatly observed (Puca et al., 2021). Our project, the development of a Banana Sap-based Antiseptic seeks to improve treatment of bacterial wound infections for individuals living in rural areas who do not have access to commercial antiseptics. 

The Banana Sap-based Antiseptic works by utilising different phytochemicals present in the banana pseudostem and in the same way limit their hemolytic activity in the wound. 

The antiseptic both arrests and stops the proliferation and spread of bacteria that causes infections in wounds but also stimulates faster healing of the wounded region using the phytochemicals present on it. The project is a response to the growing need to introduce alternatives to antibiotics. 

This growing need is further exacerbated by the reality that a country such as the Philippines, which is a third-world country, does not have a proper response to this growing need for alternatives to antibiotics due to antibiotic resistance that these hemolytic microorganisms that infect wounds have developed. In addition, one of the foundations of the project is the need to reach these far-flung regions. The project aims at introducing this technique of wound treatment to them since it is available to them since and it is found commonly in the rural environment. It is also something that is sustainable since this natural material can be utilised throughout its whole lifecycle and in addition, the fruits of the plant are used for consumption and its stem parts used for developing the antiseptic. And lastly, it is easily renewable because these plants grow back easily and since the material (Sap) is a natural material, its source can be replenished again and again. 

But more than these things, the main driving force of our project was to alleviate the condition in which these rural communities are left. These rural communities have been left to accept that their medical conditions are a hopeless cause because of the limited amount and supply of medicine and treatments available to them. Even if treatment is available to them in which case they have medical facilities closeby, they are still commonly met with challenges. One of these big challenges is poverty. In addition, these rural communities have an ingrained mistrust of modern medicine since the value of ethnomedicine (i.e. use of medical plants) has been embedded deep in the culture of these rural areas. And so, developing this antiseptic is an effective response to these two problems that modern medicine encounters in the Philippines. It both achieves the development of an antiseptic that addresses the problem of poverty in these rural communities and combines it with the deep embedded culture of these rural communities with utilising and usage of a medicinal plant. 

This research project was able to attain the following objectives:

• Develop a culturally appropriate and available bioresource to create a cheaper and sustainable antiseptic for wounds
• Create a naturally occuring antiseptic that limits the hemolytic activity of bacteria in wounds that cause and exacerbate infections