Our Story

SPECT was founded in 2011 when Christina Fast volunteered on the Africa Mercy, one of the world’s largest floating hospitals. While visiting local healthcare facilities in Freetown, Sierra Leone, she saw firsthand the challenges healthcare workers faced in safely reprocessing surgical instruments—gaps in training and resources that increased the risk of surgical infections.

Determined to support local expertise, SPECT partnered with healthcare workers in Guinea to assess needs and develop hands-on, context-specific training. This laid the foundation for our approach—collaborative, practical education tailored to real-world conditions.

In 2013–2014, in partnership with Mercy Ships, SPECT launched its first training program in the Republic of Congo, combining classroom learning with on-site mentorship. The program soon expanded to Madagascar and Benin, strengthening sterile processing practices and contributing to an innovative sterilization solution for 29 off-grid clinics that previously had no reliable way to sterilize instruments.

As of 2025, SPECT has helped strengthen sterile processing in 14 countries across three continents, training over 1,400 healthcare workers from more than 200 facilities. We remain the only known organization dedicated solely to improving sterile processing in resource-limited settings. Our training and research have sparked global discussions on safe surgery, ensuring sterile processing has a seat at the table for the first time.