Tuesday 22 December 2009

Dirty needles and children

.

A bit of common sense

By Gina Barker

What is one of the greatest killers in the world? What spreads disease all across third world countries?

It’s the same product we use every day to prevent and treat disease here in the United States.

The killer is the hypodermic needle. And it is sad that a product of convenience and luxury in one nation means the spread of disease in another. In developing nations and the third world, normal clinical practices include reusing the hypodermic needle so that hundreds of patients might use the same needle over and over again.

Each year 1.3 million people are infected and die from dirty needles. This number now surpasses the total number of malaria deaths in a year. In India alone, two-thirds of injections are using unsafe needles.

Parents in these nations are at risk just for taking their new baby to the local hospital for normal vaccinations. Baby’s first tetanus shot could infect them with hepatitis or HIV. Parents don’t know where that needle came from and didn’t see anyone unwrap it. It’s a safe bet that needle has been in contact with hundreds of patients all day.

Even before that, there is an entire market for digging through the garbage, finding discarded needles, giving them a quick rinse and repackaging them to sell to hospitals. Children in Pakistan can make several cents a day just picking through garbage looking for used syringes, where they are often stabbed hundreds of times just in the process of looking for these needles. That needle dug up in the trash could be the same needle vaccinating a child. Did it carry HIV? It’s a thought most parents don’t even consider because of an over-trust in doctors using western medicine.

A substantial number of “dirty needle deaths” are children. According to SafePoint, a nonprofit organization working to prevent unsafe injections and educate on proper medical care, every 24 seconds a child dies as a result of an unsafe injection. And each of these deaths is easily prevented. In one fell swoop, spreading disease with the reuse of dirty needles could stop completely. Marc Koska is the inventor of the K1 single-shot syringe. The way the syringe works is that once the initial shot is given and the plunger is pushed all the way to the bottom, pulling the syringe back to reload will break the plunger, making it impossible, or at least extremely frustrating, to use a second time. Best part of all this, the syringe uses all the same parts already in use in syringe production and costs just 5 cents.

Avert.org, another nonprofit organization focused on preventing AIDS in Europe, claims Eastern Europe has the world’s fastest growth rate of HIV/AIDS infections, and this is largely due to dirty needles.

In a New York Times article dating from 1990, orphanages in Romania experienced a boom of HIV/AIDS orphans, most presumed infected by sharing needles. This story took years to unfold as the pattern became recognized. AIDS infections created an invisible border between Eastern and Western Europe, the former Soviet and the rest, and this border still exists.

The technology that was meant to save people resulted in the infection and death of millions.

The single-shot syringe is now standardized in several nations. Using any other kind of needle is illegal in some cases, but this is a battle far from seeing the end. Making sure safe injection practices are used in a nation where no standard one-shot system exists means convincing local clinics and hospitals to willingly choose the slightly more expensive syringe.

We’re talking pocket change in America to prevent the deaths of millions around the world. It’s an interesting thought next time you have blood drawn for a test or get the seasonal flu shot that you lucked out. That’s a clean needle in your arm, a fact a majority of the world can’t match.

First published on Weber State University's "The Signpost", 25 Nov 09
.

Sunday 20 December 2009

Nikon Owner magazine captures Marc’s work in India

.

Simon Stafford, Technical Editor of Nikon Owner magazine, accompanied Marc and members of SafePoint for ten days and recounted his experiences via a series of beautifully shot pictures capturing vibrant people and places, but also devastating evidence of needles being re-used.

He saw first-hand harrowing scenes in surgeries and clinics with medical staff throwing blood-stained needles in buckets under counters ready to be used again on many sick and frail members of the public waiting outside. Moving from New Delhi, to Pune and then Jaipur, Simon witnessed Marc and his team delivering their powerful message to the public on the effects that unsafe injections can have.

Marc Koska spreads the word in the US

Marc Koska of Star Syringe, Ltd, Winner of 2008 Tech Award, Health
photo:
godutchbaby

Marc has just returned from an extremely successful trip to the USA, where he was honoured to be invited to three key events:
  • a Know How Talk at the IDEO Cafe, hosted by Dennis Boyle, IDEO senior partner. IDEO is the world renowned Global Design Consultancy based in Palo Alto, CA. Marc's talk was entitled 'Shameless' (how you have to be, to change something in this world). Discussions after the talk focused on his efforts to save lives through syringe design and his charity SafePoint.
  • The Tech Awards Gala as a past Laureate; Marc was invited to host a live link sponsored by Polycom, between the newest member of the SafePoint team, Kate Thorman, in India, and Fabio Rosa, a Canadian former fellow Laureate..

Monday 14 December 2009

Founder of The Safepoint Trust, Marc Koska, featured in Wired Magazine

.
December issue of Wired UK

Renown for its articles on new ideas, technology, culture and business, Wired Magazine features a profile on Marc in its UK December 2009 issue.

Interviewed and written by Jack Dyson, the article sums up the last 25 years of Marc’s plight.

This is not the first time that Marc has appeared in Wired. In August 2009, the story of how he came to invent the auto disable syringe and set up The Safepoint Trust is told in an article called "One use only: the broken syringe that saves lives" by Katie Scott. And in the US version of Wired, Marc's invention and Safepoint are mentioned in a November 2009 article called "Gadgets and Ideas to Revolutionize Healthcare" by Aaron Rowe.
.

Friday 11 December 2009

Safepoint founder's TED talk shown on CNN site on World AIDS Day

.
.

Entitled,"The price of saving a life is a few pennies", Marc Koska's TED talk was added to CNN's Opinion site on 1 December 2009, World AIDS Day:


  • Reuse of syringes costs an estimated 1.3 million lives a year
  • Syringes can spread blood-borne diseases such as HIV and hepatitis
  • Low-cost syringes that can be used only once are produced
  • India has mandated use of auto-disable syringes
.

ShareThis