Aseptic Compounding in New Zealand and the use of Still Air Boxes.

Toward the end of the 1980s the care of terminally ill patients in New Zealand moved from state-owned hospitals into community hospice settings. As a result, repsonsibility for the management of medicines for patients receiving palliative care also transferred to the comunity hospice environment. To meet the requirements of palliative care patients and to facilitate the compounding of sterile preparations, community pharmacists began to compound certain aseptic preparations with a Still Air Box, a unique apparatus that is an alternative to the more expensive and bulky laminar airflow cabinets.