Medis Medical® have an extensive sales network in all the major business centres in South Africa, as well as the countries of Botswana and Namibia. We enthusiastically embrace the rainbow nation that is South Africa and actively promote equal opportunities through BEE.

Over the years we have built up strong, loyal customer relationships and believe this is because of our absolute dedication to customer service excellence. Our customers want the best possible treatment for their patients and expect us to supply them with the best available products. This is why Medis® exclusively supply Royce® orthopaedic products, ProVena™ and RxFit® medical compression stockings and RxFit® bandages.

In the City of Cape Town, the year 1980, a vascular surgeon, Dr Daantjie van der Merwe had a problem. He had mastered the internationally accepted compression treatment for deep vein insufficiency and had been demonstrating this technique nationally. Then Apartheid took its toll – Becton Dickinson, the distributor of the new compression products, withdrew from South Africa.

Dr Van Der Merwe had just too many patients suffering from deep vein insufficiency and decided to do something about this situation. He registered a company, Damorina, and started to import and distribute compression hosiery and bandages. With a single representative and a garage as warehouse, his business slowly grew into a respectable supplier of compression products. His wife Rina played a major role in running this small company.

In 1993 Damorina was restructured into a new company, MEDIS, in which the Van Der Merwe family were the only shareholders. Very soon, a new product line, ROYCE MEDICAL orthotics, was added to the product list. In 1998 the RxFIT Hosiery brand was successfully introduced to the market when supply of BD products became erratic. To this day, RxFIT hosiery is widely used throughout South Africa.

In 1999 Dr Wim de Klerk bought MEDIS with the idea to grow it into a fully-fledged distributor of orthotics and surgical products. Dr Van Der Merwe’s enthusiasm for compression treatment rubbed off and soon MEDIS became involved in every aspect of compression treatment in South Africa.

In 2000 MEDIS introduced the concept of anti-embolism hosiery with ankle measurement and soon became a major player in this market. New life was blown into this method of DVT prevention by our creative thinking and strategy of end user training.

In 2001 MEDIS began investigating the idea of compression in sport and soon supplied the Western Province Cricket team with sports compression hosiery. This was another first in the compression field. By 2003 compression hosiery was used by provincial teams nationally in the prevention of injury. Research in the sports compression field is ongoing. Close co-operation with athletes, academic institutions and international role players will certainly deliver interesting results in the near future.

In 2002 compression bandage supply became a problem and MEDIS went on a mission to find the best in compression bandage manufacturers. This was quickly accomplished and within 6 months MEDIS introduced the new RxFIT range, which now gave them scope to grow extensively. By 2003 the RxFIT E and V “Scientific Bandaging” range was well established. For the first time the user could have some idea of sub-bandage pressure, when using compression bandaging. The RxFIT F, G, and S followed in 2004 and in 2005 were complemented with the RxFIT P. In 2006 the RxFIT M, LF and ULCE4 will be introduced to add to the dramatic growth of the RxFIT “Scientific Bandaging” range. The LF being our first LATEX FREE bandage in the range!

At MEDIS we believe that “Scientific Bandaging” should be more than just marketing and therefore involved the Design and Mechatronics Division, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Stellenbosch, in order to measure the compression of our bandages. All our compression bandages has been tested to confirm sub-bandage pressures and any future additions will be tested as well. This interaction has lead to interesting results, which could lead to groundbreaking work being published in the near future!

At MEDIS we coined the phrase “Afro-centric Woundcare” since we believe that woundcare in South Africa and the rest of Africa has its own peculiarities. This even more so with compression bandaging, as cost and living conditions differ from 1st World countries. MEDIS works closely with government institutions, in order to find cost-effective solutions for venous ulcer treatment. This research hopefully could be utilized throughout Africa in order to provide ulcer care to the poorest of the poor.

Other aspects of compression treatment, such as varicose disease, coning of amputees, tired leg syndrome, compression in diabetics and compression in pregnancy, also receives our attention. Yes, at MEDIS we challenge the compression boundaries daily and will continue to do so for years to come.