The front page on this day in 1977 featured the news that an inventor, trying to assist more than 60,000 users of colostomy bags, had received a grant of $6,000. Mr Roy McDonnell of O'Connor would use the grant for his first small production run of 600 colostomy bags and filter devices.
From the first-ever colostomy operation, performed in 1793, colostomy bags, attached to an abdominal opening called a stoma to catch human waste for those who had undergone colostomy surgery, had been made of linen, rubber and finally plastic. These bags could easily be removed and washed, but the odour was an issue Mr McDonnell was trying to solve.
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The Canberran had invented improved bags, with ventilation through activated carbon which killed odour. After hearing of users' problems from a GP in O'Connor three years prior, Mr McDonnell had been hard at work creating new bags throughout the years that followed.
He said the government grant would enable him to get from the prototype to the first production run.
Mr McDonnell, a 60-year-old retired medical engineer, had previously won the John Lysaght Inventors Award for his design of a drip regulator.
