Canon Medical Systems UK has announced today that they have managed over the past three and a half years a sustainable milestone offsetting 20,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from ultrasound, X-ray, CT, and MRI systems installed in UK hospitals. This means that more than 22,000 people from rural Kenya and Uganda have received help to improve mortality, health, quality of life, and female empowerment.
Canon is also the only UK medical equipment to be a carbon neutral business that meets all PAS2060 requirements by the British Standards Institute. Each one of its productsâ carbon footprint used in the daily prevention, diagnosis and treatment of patients in NHS and private hospitals has been calculated, taking into account all elements involved in the manufacture, packaging, shipping and average energy usage for the standard lifetime of a system. At the end of each month, these figures are translated into tonnes of carbon and offset to a high impact project in a developing country.
We are aware that the NHS is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. Our R&D commitment starts with developing systems that use less electricity and thus emit less carbon, at the same time as seeing more patients, delivering the highest quality clinical images at the lowest possible dose. This spirit of innovation then extends to sustainability where we embrace a gold-standard scheme that helps some of the poorest rural communities in East Africa, said Mark Hitchman, UK Managing Director of Canon Medical Systems.
The carbon offset scheme provides 35 modern fuel efficient stoves per MRI system sold, which reduce the amount of smoke particles in a family home. Cooking on open stoves is a big health issue in developing nations with World Health Organisation figures stating that there are 3.8 million premature deaths per year from non-communicable diseases such as stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer.
One of Canon Medical Systemsâ latest innovations is the CT scanner that recovers energy when the gantry decelerates from spinning and reduces emissions due to its advanced standby functionality.
