See Marc's talk and learn the scale of the problem of syringe re-use. Does re-use only occur in third world countries? Find out here.......
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label india. Show all posts
Monday, 23 May 2011
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Spread the word and forward this film
We make no apologies for immediately asking you to do one small thing upon reading this blog post.
Your support is invaluable in helping us bring to light the devastating consequences that unsafe injection practices can have.
Please take two minutes out of your day and click here (www.lifesaveraction.org) to see the most recent film Marc has made on the issue of injection safety.
Safe Injection Message
Click here to Comment on this video, and Favourite, Rate and Share it in YouTube
LifeSaver is a campaign that is inviting all global AD (auto-disable) syringe manufacturers to include the new LifeSaver logo and message "New Packet. Used Once. Safely Disposed" on all their packaging. LifeSaver represents the procedure given by a health worker and received by a patient, and can be simply adopted, free of charge, by any organisation. The logo is distinctive and easily recognized, and will act as a unique guarantee of a safe injection.
For more information, see www.marckoska.com.
Your support is invaluable in helping us bring to light the devastating consequences that unsafe injection practices can have.
Please take two minutes out of your day and click here (www.lifesaveraction.org) to see the most recent film Marc has made on the issue of injection safety.
Safe Injection Message
.
In it, you'll hear how fatal diseases like HIV and Hepatitis are most often spread by unsafe injections and by the everyday actions of heatlhcare workers in millions of under funded clinics in developing countries.
We would ask you please to watch the film, and then forward the link to as many friends and family as you can.
We know from our work over the past 25 years that awareness prompts action.
We're aiming to reach our target of 10 million lives saved this year, and we need your help to do so.
Thank you!
We would ask you please to watch the film, and then forward the link to as many friends and family as you can.
We know from our work over the past 25 years that awareness prompts action.
We're aiming to reach our target of 10 million lives saved this year, and we need your help to do so.
Thank you!
What is LifeSaver?
LifeSaver is a campaign that is inviting all global AD (auto-disable) syringe manufacturers to include the new LifeSaver logo and message "New Packet. Used Once. Safely Disposed" on all their packaging. LifeSaver represents the procedure given by a health worker and received by a patient, and can be simply adopted, free of charge, by any organisation. The logo is distinctive and easily recognized, and will act as a unique guarantee of a safe injection.For more information, see www.marckoska.com.
Friday, 9 July 2010
A Chocolate Bar Named After Marc Koska
Milk Chocolate Indian Summer - the Koska BarFor every Koska Bar sold, Cocoaloco
will donate 50p to SafePoint!
will donate 50p to SafePoint!
(Excerpted from http://www.cocoaloco.co.uk/acatalog/News.html)
"SafePoint are a charity who work predominately in the developing world to educate and promote safe injections. A problem not widely recognised in the UK, unsafe injections from reused syringes and needles are responsible for the death of a child every twenty four seconds, with over twenty three million avoidable infections every year, according to World Health Organisation figures.
As part of their work, SafePoint make dedicated short films for countries or cultural regions that spark reaction, inform and change behaviour. These films are shown on TV and at cinemas to raise awareness and their latest film is supported by the past President Dr Kalam for nationwide distribution, as part of an intensive safe injection campaign in India.
Like many things, it shouldn't happen but it does
Having recently heard Marc Koska, the founder of SafePoint, talking about the horrific reality of the problem of unsafe injections across the world, we felt moved to action.
To help support SafePoint and help raise awareness we have launched a brand new organic and Fairtrade chocolate bar.
To give it its full title, the organic Milk Chocolate Indian Summer - The Koska Bar, is influenced by SafePoint's work, with a balanced blend of spices in a smooth milk chocolate, invoking tastes of India.
For every bar sold we will donate fifty pence to Safepoint and we will be supporting them moving forward, so watch this space for further news."
You can buy the Koska Bar here - price: £4.99
Latest News:
Cocoaloco are now starting to supply the National Trust gift shops in the SE and the Koska Bar will be available at:
- Morden Hall
- Nymans Gardens
- Petworth House
- Chartwell
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Use of unsterilised, reused syringes still rampant
The work of Marc Koska, OBE and his charity, SafePoint Trust, was recently featured in an article in The Times of India
PUNE: An average person receives 3 to 5 injections per year, and more than 50 per cent of these are being administered by unsterilised and reused syringes, said Marc Koska, CEO-founder, SafePoint Trust, UK. Koska was in the city to brief mediapersons about the rapid strides his organisation has made to address the biggest man-made threat of re-used syringes.
Although Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss agreed that from April 30, 2009, all Central government hospitals under CGHS will completely switch to auto-disable syringes, complying with the existing ISO standard across all sectors, it remains a Herculean task to achieve the desired objective, said Koska.
"After the successful nation-wide campaign launched in November 2008, the decision to use AD syringes was hailed by one and all. However, the reality is very bitter. India is plagued by its own set of problems. On the one hand, health of the poor population, especially living in slums, are under severe threat as quacks mostly use re-used syringes. Lack of education, unhygienic conditions and poverty contribute to their misery," said Koska.
To read the full article, click here.
.
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
The Climb Tanzania 2010 is launched
On 26th May, The Climb Tanzania 2010 was launched in conjunction with Mountain Range Restaurants' 5th anniversary celebrations at The Swan in Forest Row.
Background
Marc Koska OBE has worked tirelessly over the last 25 years on Global Healthcare with a particular focus on Injection Safety. After spending years researching the syringe industry, Marc invented an AD (Auto Disable) syringe, the K1 - that physically prevents re-use. To-date Marc and the K1 have been credited with saving well over 9 Million lives but Marc knew from the start that product alone would not stop this silent epidemic, so Marc set up The SafePoint Trust in 2006. The main purpose of SafePoint is to use information to solve this very basic healthcare need, and this is done by delivering hard-hitting public awareness campaigns. Marc and SafePoint work hard to ensure that the public are educated with this lifesaving message, coupled with extensive lobbying for legislation change at ministerial level ensures that this basic human right is restored.
Outline
Marc Koska OBE and The SafePoint Trust would like to invite you to support them on:
The Climb 2010 Kilimanjaro, Tanzania - Rising 4800m above the East African plains, 270km from the shores of the Indian Ocean and measuring up to 40km across, Kilimanjaro is a bizarre geological oddity, the tallest freestanding mountain in the world and one formed, shaped, eroded and scarred by the twin forces of fire and ice. It is actually a volcano, or rather three volcanoes, with the two main peaks, Kibo and Mawenzi, the summits of two of those volcanoes.
Five team members will climb the mountain armed with 20 flags – each flag will be fully branded with a logo from each sponsor. Day seven will see them at the peak of the mountain, at this point a photographer will ensure each flag is photographed capturing the stunning view and the euphoric atmosphere of the team.
On the teamʼs return the UK sponsors will get a framed glossy photograph of their flag at the peak. Along with this your company will feature heavily in all publicity around the event including a press release, national and regional newspapers, regional TV and radio stations and leading business / lifestyle magazines. The whole event will be posted on facebook, twitter and will have its own blog. Sponsors can also make their logo available to feature on the kit of the climbers.
A one-off donation of £5,000 to buy a flag is all that is required and 90% of this donation / sponsorship money will enable us to give Two Million syringes to Tanzania. SafePoint will present the container of syringes to the Hon Prof. David Mwakyusam, Heath Minister of Tanzania once they have finished the climb.
Why Tanzania?
Tanzania are at the forefront of safe healthcare in Africa, they are to become one of only two countries converted to using AD syringes in the ECSA Region. With their policy already in place, trained healthcare workers and a public information film donated by SafePoint they are ready to reduce country medical costs and ease the HIV / Hepatitis disease burden. More importantly with this donation we will ensure they have enough product to stock the 26 regions at the start of this initiative.
Facts and figures on unsafe healthcare:
• Each and every year due to unsafe injections there are:
• 23,000 HIV Infections
• 1,000,000 Hepatitis C Infections
• 21,000,000 Hepatitis B Infections
• RESULTING IN 1,300,000 DEATHS EACH YEAR (Source: WHO World Health Organisation)
• Some 17 billion injections are given each year, and 7 billion of these are unsafe medical injections (Source: Hutin 2003)
• Malaria kills 1,000,000 - so this silent epidemic kills more people each year (Source: WHO World Health Organisation)
• In Africa 20 million medical injections contaminated with blood from a patient with HIV are administered every year (Source: Reid 2009)
• At least 50% of injections given were unsafe (Source: WHO World Health Organisation)
• A syringe is used on average 7 times in the developing world
• Every 24 seconds a child dies as a result of an unsafe injection
Further information
Mountain Range Restaurants are supporting The SafePoint Trust on their Climb 2010. Mountain Range also celebrate their five year anniversary this year in conjunction with this SafePoint will send five people to climb Kilimanjaro raising money to donate syringes to Tanzania.
http://www.marckoska.com/
http://www.safepointtrust.org/
You can reach the SafePoint Team on: 01825 713722 or via email: info@safepointtrust.org
.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Marc Koska: 1.3m reasons to re-invent the syringe
Malaria kills 1 million people a year? Reused syringes kill 1.3 million a year? Holy crap. Those are the sort of numbers that remind me in no uncertain terms that I live in a privileged world.
OK, a few minutes in and I'm convinced this is one of the most terrifying TED talks I've seen.
Sometimes we joke about planned obsolescence, or about items breaking just as they come out of warranty. Marc Koska's one-time-use (enforced) syringes are that, but for the best of reasons. This is the kind of thing that will save lives.
Excerpted from reviewingted.posterous.com
Monday, 22 February 2010
The hard-hitting facts about the re-use of syringes
.
Click to enlarge image
- killing 1.3 million people a year by transmitting viruses from one patient to another
- killing more people than malaria, which currently kills about 1 million a year
- causing 23 million cases of Hepatitis B a year and, consequently, enormous treatment costs.
- syringes, on average, are used around 4 times in the developing world
Click to enlarge imageThursday, 18 February 2010
Marc Koska's DLD talk, word for word
.
Marc Koska at DLD10
Transcript of a talk given by Marc Koska at DLD10 about the transmission of disease through unsafe injections - and the solution to this problem that he invented:
Steffi: Marc Koska, Marc has a special thing; he is devoted to the humanitarian cause for 20 years. He invented of an AD syringe called K1 - physically prevents re-use, but you tell it better.
Marc: Thank you Steffi. Well I’d really like to thank Steffi and her team for the warm welcome and secondly just to fulfill a promise, to mention Gabriella from HP because I did say that I would do that.
I promise, I make you one promise also before I start that this will be the lowest tech presentation that you see today. Everything else has just been in another level compared to where I operate. So here we go.
My subject is the re-use of syringes. The re-use of syringes kills 1.3 million people by transmitting viruses from one patient to another. It actually results in also 23 million cases of Hepatitis B and you can imagine the cost of treating that on a global scale, and that’s a cumulative number; 23 million cases every single year. Syringes on average are used around 4 times in the developing world and it's just unacceptable, so I decided to do something about it. In fact it kills more people than malaria, which currently kills about 1 million a year.
These three children that I met in an orphanage in Delhi sadly all had HIV and two of them have passed away now. They had HIV because they went and got an injection from a doctor that their parents had taken them to and were supervising. But what was the saddest thing is that all three of these were actually orphaned straight afterwards. Their parents gave them away once they became HIV positive, which is a double tragedy.
Re-use is a problem and this scum bag doctor here in India admitted to me that he had actually re-used this syringe 25 times in one day. This footage here shows you some undercover film that we took in a hospital (again in India) where 40 medicines were delivered; you can see them on the tray in the top corner, and 40 medicines were delivered with two syringes only, to the whole floor of that hospital. And in a minute, you’ll see a nurse return (here she comes) back to the tray, which is their station and drop back the syringe, ready to be used on this next patient. And this is happening on an hourly, minute-by-minute basis across India.
These needles are wet and they're ready to be used again. They are not wet in Europe, they are only wet in the developing world because they’ve been washed downstairs and then bought back up. Patients are often given the choice to pick a needle.
Outside hospitals, we find baths created actually to wash the syringes on a wholesale basis. This is the number of barrels and plungers that were in that bath. If you look closely you can see what’s inside them. This lady was burnt in a dowry burning in Pakistan, and when I talked to her, I asked her why she was back because all her burns were all healed, but still with bad disfigurement. She said she was in the hospital to be treated for Hepatitis B. I asked her where she had contracted it, and ironically (she didn’t see the irony), she contracted it in that very room that we were standing in, taking that photograph. Ten years earlier, being treated for the burns and it was something that has just plagued her life.
This syringe maybe is the world record holder. The ink has come off the barrel and that means that it must have been used over a 100 times. There’s recycling and this is a 6 year-old girl, early in the morning in Islamabad, leaving (in Erdu this says health centre), leaving a health centre with a bag from yesterday's work; there’s blood bags, there’s scalpels, there’s syringes and needles in there, and she’s taking them off to be recycled.
There’s a growing market for plastic. Not necessarily for re-use, but also for washing and recycling back into the market. And while they’re doing this, these kids, they bash into each other and they prick themselves. And I took this photograph and I was so utterly ashamed when one boy poked the other boy with a needle and his hand started bleeding and I felt absolutely devastated that I had caused that by being the white man taking the photograph. He said “no, no don’t worry, it happens 5 times a day.” (which it did).
In China, wholesale recycling again and then re-sorting to be sold and actually, just quickly back to Pakistan - this is the boy’s father who was showing me a syringe, and while he was digging it out of the pile of rubbish on the floor he pricked the end of his finger. And very interestingly, he whipped out a box of matches, lit one match and burnt the bead of blood that was on the end of his finger, and assured me that that was absolutely safe now and there was no way that he could be infected with HIV. So you can see the misinformation coming into this scene.
And then there’s misuse. Kids are sold syringes, sadly used syringes, on toy stalls in school, and they use them for water pistols. But what you don’t see is that afterwards, because it’s hot, they use these water pistols to squirt into their mouth and they drink the water, and afterwards you can see that the one that’s closest to you is blood stained, there’s all sorts of rubbish in the other one. So it’s just a bizarre, terrible act that is being perpetrated.
Anyway I followed this route through and we got in a car with the toy seller in it. He took us to where he bought his syringes wholesale, and we found these kids turning these syringes over in the sun to dry them, so that they could be ready for sale as toys. They were unprotected; they had to actually remove all the needles before they prepared them. And here you can see them in the display - there’s tanks and cap pistols and all sort or normal plastic toys and then some bunches of syringes.
So the solution is that we need a safer product. Well I came across this problem 25 years ago. I was a young guy. I was actually looking for a problem like this. It was something that had fascinated me for a long time, the intervention in large diseases, and then when I read a newspaper article which said that one day syringes would be a major cause, I knew instantly that that was what I wanted to do.
So I researched the problem including the new innovations that were out there. But I researched the problem from A to Z. I looked at how plastic was refined, how it was molded into syringes, how they were stored, how they were marketed, how they were distributed. And then what happened to them during and after use, and who regulated these. So I studied this for two and a half years and then was able to come up with the design, which I’m just about to show you.
An informed public, obviously that’s what we need, so that they can back off. Funnily enough there’s no way in the areas that I work if I ask a child if they would re-use, or they would use the toothbrush of their neighbour, they jump back in horror. “No way!”, “That’s disgusting!” And yet they’re subject to the medical abuse. And I think that (this is where I spend most of my time), we need to fight for human rights on this subject. It’s not right that a doctor can trick their patient in this way.
The product, it’s very difficult to show you on screen, is a valve that’s molded into the plunger, and then it breaks afterwards, and I think, if I hold this up here, here we go. This is one of my syringes and it works in exactly the same way as a normal syringe. So you do all the complex or simple procedures and you give the injection. Then after use, if someone wants to re-use this, (either accidently or on purpose) and they try and re-use it, it locks and breaks. And this valve is molded into the plunger during the manufacturing process. It’s very, very easy to make this modification; it’s very cheap and my vision is that every single syringe factory in the world should make this, or something like it and then we can end this situation.
Just a personal photograph. This was the first syringe I ever saw used of my design in Cambodia in 2001 and if you remember, I started the journey 25 years ago in 1984 and it took me 17 and a half years to actually sell the first product, which I sold to UNICEF. And then this was part of a UNICEF program, which I was able to witness, and I cried. It was a lovely moment.
They’re made on existing machinery as I mentioned, not that this is going to make, unless your in injection molding, this is a typical nest for making barrels and that’s exactly the same one that we use so we don’t make any major changes. Our product comes out at about 5 cents, depends on different territories, different volumes but that’s the average price, and that’s actually the average price for a normal syringe. So we aim to match the price exactly. You can’t really make a product like this any cheaper. If we could, we would, I promise you.
But just to put it into perspective, it’s one tenth the price of a soft drink. And believe you me, Coca Cola are in Tanzania, they’re in Cambodia, they’re in India for the indigenous population. They’re not there for the tourist trade. So everyone can afford Coca Cola, therefore everyone can afford a safe injection, it’s just they don’t know they have to.
I wanted to, sort of, take you into one particular area that I focused on last year. I was donated a lot of money from a European donor who allowed me to run a dream. And the dream was to go and run a programme in India. The minister there had always refused to see me. And over the last four years, he had point blank just not answered any communication. And yet during that time they had published the study that 62% of all injections given in India were unsafe. So I had to find a new way of, sort of, tackling that and what better than the largest democratic population in the world. What I was able to do was do 11 trips to India doing research and I was able to talk to lots and lots and lots of public, school children and come up with a message that they all agreed was the reduction of the problem and therefore that they could understand it and everyone could understand it - that was simply that a syringe should come in a sealed packet, and you should see it opened in front of you, after use, it should be broken, (it doesn’t have to be one of mine) - you can snap the plunger on any product. And that thirdly, it had to go into a safety box.
Now obviously, you can’t enforce safety boxes in every country, but it’s the goal. We were very kindly joined in our program by this lady, Kiran Bedi. She’s probably the most well known lady in India. Her voice is very well known, as well as her face and she joined us on this campaign and it resulted in a large scale, 5-day blitz across India. We were able to hold 14 press conferences, we were in 240 newspapers, we bought the media with the money that was donated to 10,500 radio announcements and 5,000 TV announcements and this was, maybe, the largest public health campaign in the world, because in 5 days, we were able to inform 700 million people.
Now the key was, that during this newspaper expose, I got most of the newspapers to run the headline “Minister refuses to meet Syringe Guru”, which of course went straight back to head office and he got really annoyed. A couple of weeks later, I was able to return to Delhi, on my own, privately I went to see him and he gave in and passed a law, which came into effect in April 2009. And now with the adoption of that law, it’s growing daily, we’ve got about 40% now of all public hospitals and clinics across India are using auto disable syringes.
And my final bête noire is the UN. I’m not very well received there, and maybe I just move too fast, or actually do something which hasn’t been researched and written about, so they’re not really my greatest supporters. But never the less, I am now working on UN resolutions in the African union, in the east central and southern African countries, and hopefully one day, in the next couple of years, I would like to have a global resolution for the safety, to protect these people under the banner. Not my banner, or my product, but under the banner that we have developed, which we’ve proposed to the industry - called LifeSaver.
So every syringe gets stamped with this in one colour, and then everyone who uses it knows that it is a quality assurance symbol. 50% of injections are unsafe in the world, as I mentioned. One dollar spent now on safe injections results in a $200 treatment cost, (which is new data) which is just coming out of Tanzania, which is very exciting. Because if we can base this on economy, I think we can move it forward very, very fast.
And just to wrap up, since that 2001, since that first syringe that we sold in Cambodia, we have been able to sell 1.8 billion K1 syringes and that has resulted in about 9 million lives saved - so you can imagine we are very proud.
This is the insanity ladies and gentlemen, and this is what we are trying to stop and I think it comes from safer product, better information and then once we’ve done our job, perhaps the governments will do theirs.
Thank you very much.
.
Marc Koska at DLD10Transcript of a talk given by Marc Koska at DLD10 about the transmission of disease through unsafe injections - and the solution to this problem that he invented:
Steffi: Marc Koska, Marc has a special thing; he is devoted to the humanitarian cause for 20 years. He invented of an AD syringe called K1 - physically prevents re-use, but you tell it better.
Marc: Thank you Steffi. Well I’d really like to thank Steffi and her team for the warm welcome and secondly just to fulfill a promise, to mention Gabriella from HP because I did say that I would do that.
I promise, I make you one promise also before I start that this will be the lowest tech presentation that you see today. Everything else has just been in another level compared to where I operate. So here we go.
My subject is the re-use of syringes. The re-use of syringes kills 1.3 million people by transmitting viruses from one patient to another. It actually results in also 23 million cases of Hepatitis B and you can imagine the cost of treating that on a global scale, and that’s a cumulative number; 23 million cases every single year. Syringes on average are used around 4 times in the developing world and it's just unacceptable, so I decided to do something about it. In fact it kills more people than malaria, which currently kills about 1 million a year.
These three children that I met in an orphanage in Delhi sadly all had HIV and two of them have passed away now. They had HIV because they went and got an injection from a doctor that their parents had taken them to and were supervising. But what was the saddest thing is that all three of these were actually orphaned straight afterwards. Their parents gave them away once they became HIV positive, which is a double tragedy.
Re-use is a problem and this scum bag doctor here in India admitted to me that he had actually re-used this syringe 25 times in one day. This footage here shows you some undercover film that we took in a hospital (again in India) where 40 medicines were delivered; you can see them on the tray in the top corner, and 40 medicines were delivered with two syringes only, to the whole floor of that hospital. And in a minute, you’ll see a nurse return (here she comes) back to the tray, which is their station and drop back the syringe, ready to be used on this next patient. And this is happening on an hourly, minute-by-minute basis across India.
These needles are wet and they're ready to be used again. They are not wet in Europe, they are only wet in the developing world because they’ve been washed downstairs and then bought back up. Patients are often given the choice to pick a needle.
Outside hospitals, we find baths created actually to wash the syringes on a wholesale basis. This is the number of barrels and plungers that were in that bath. If you look closely you can see what’s inside them. This lady was burnt in a dowry burning in Pakistan, and when I talked to her, I asked her why she was back because all her burns were all healed, but still with bad disfigurement. She said she was in the hospital to be treated for Hepatitis B. I asked her where she had contracted it, and ironically (she didn’t see the irony), she contracted it in that very room that we were standing in, taking that photograph. Ten years earlier, being treated for the burns and it was something that has just plagued her life.
This syringe maybe is the world record holder. The ink has come off the barrel and that means that it must have been used over a 100 times. There’s recycling and this is a 6 year-old girl, early in the morning in Islamabad, leaving (in Erdu this says health centre), leaving a health centre with a bag from yesterday's work; there’s blood bags, there’s scalpels, there’s syringes and needles in there, and she’s taking them off to be recycled.
There’s a growing market for plastic. Not necessarily for re-use, but also for washing and recycling back into the market. And while they’re doing this, these kids, they bash into each other and they prick themselves. And I took this photograph and I was so utterly ashamed when one boy poked the other boy with a needle and his hand started bleeding and I felt absolutely devastated that I had caused that by being the white man taking the photograph. He said “no, no don’t worry, it happens 5 times a day.” (which it did).
In China, wholesale recycling again and then re-sorting to be sold and actually, just quickly back to Pakistan - this is the boy’s father who was showing me a syringe, and while he was digging it out of the pile of rubbish on the floor he pricked the end of his finger. And very interestingly, he whipped out a box of matches, lit one match and burnt the bead of blood that was on the end of his finger, and assured me that that was absolutely safe now and there was no way that he could be infected with HIV. So you can see the misinformation coming into this scene.
And then there’s misuse. Kids are sold syringes, sadly used syringes, on toy stalls in school, and they use them for water pistols. But what you don’t see is that afterwards, because it’s hot, they use these water pistols to squirt into their mouth and they drink the water, and afterwards you can see that the one that’s closest to you is blood stained, there’s all sorts of rubbish in the other one. So it’s just a bizarre, terrible act that is being perpetrated.
Anyway I followed this route through and we got in a car with the toy seller in it. He took us to where he bought his syringes wholesale, and we found these kids turning these syringes over in the sun to dry them, so that they could be ready for sale as toys. They were unprotected; they had to actually remove all the needles before they prepared them. And here you can see them in the display - there’s tanks and cap pistols and all sort or normal plastic toys and then some bunches of syringes.
So the solution is that we need a safer product. Well I came across this problem 25 years ago. I was a young guy. I was actually looking for a problem like this. It was something that had fascinated me for a long time, the intervention in large diseases, and then when I read a newspaper article which said that one day syringes would be a major cause, I knew instantly that that was what I wanted to do.
So I researched the problem including the new innovations that were out there. But I researched the problem from A to Z. I looked at how plastic was refined, how it was molded into syringes, how they were stored, how they were marketed, how they were distributed. And then what happened to them during and after use, and who regulated these. So I studied this for two and a half years and then was able to come up with the design, which I’m just about to show you.
An informed public, obviously that’s what we need, so that they can back off. Funnily enough there’s no way in the areas that I work if I ask a child if they would re-use, or they would use the toothbrush of their neighbour, they jump back in horror. “No way!”, “That’s disgusting!” And yet they’re subject to the medical abuse. And I think that (this is where I spend most of my time), we need to fight for human rights on this subject. It’s not right that a doctor can trick their patient in this way.
The product, it’s very difficult to show you on screen, is a valve that’s molded into the plunger, and then it breaks afterwards, and I think, if I hold this up here, here we go. This is one of my syringes and it works in exactly the same way as a normal syringe. So you do all the complex or simple procedures and you give the injection. Then after use, if someone wants to re-use this, (either accidently or on purpose) and they try and re-use it, it locks and breaks. And this valve is molded into the plunger during the manufacturing process. It’s very, very easy to make this modification; it’s very cheap and my vision is that every single syringe factory in the world should make this, or something like it and then we can end this situation.
Just a personal photograph. This was the first syringe I ever saw used of my design in Cambodia in 2001 and if you remember, I started the journey 25 years ago in 1984 and it took me 17 and a half years to actually sell the first product, which I sold to UNICEF. And then this was part of a UNICEF program, which I was able to witness, and I cried. It was a lovely moment.
They’re made on existing machinery as I mentioned, not that this is going to make, unless your in injection molding, this is a typical nest for making barrels and that’s exactly the same one that we use so we don’t make any major changes. Our product comes out at about 5 cents, depends on different territories, different volumes but that’s the average price, and that’s actually the average price for a normal syringe. So we aim to match the price exactly. You can’t really make a product like this any cheaper. If we could, we would, I promise you.
But just to put it into perspective, it’s one tenth the price of a soft drink. And believe you me, Coca Cola are in Tanzania, they’re in Cambodia, they’re in India for the indigenous population. They’re not there for the tourist trade. So everyone can afford Coca Cola, therefore everyone can afford a safe injection, it’s just they don’t know they have to.
I wanted to, sort of, take you into one particular area that I focused on last year. I was donated a lot of money from a European donor who allowed me to run a dream. And the dream was to go and run a programme in India. The minister there had always refused to see me. And over the last four years, he had point blank just not answered any communication. And yet during that time they had published the study that 62% of all injections given in India were unsafe. So I had to find a new way of, sort of, tackling that and what better than the largest democratic population in the world. What I was able to do was do 11 trips to India doing research and I was able to talk to lots and lots and lots of public, school children and come up with a message that they all agreed was the reduction of the problem and therefore that they could understand it and everyone could understand it - that was simply that a syringe should come in a sealed packet, and you should see it opened in front of you, after use, it should be broken, (it doesn’t have to be one of mine) - you can snap the plunger on any product. And that thirdly, it had to go into a safety box.
Now obviously, you can’t enforce safety boxes in every country, but it’s the goal. We were very kindly joined in our program by this lady, Kiran Bedi. She’s probably the most well known lady in India. Her voice is very well known, as well as her face and she joined us on this campaign and it resulted in a large scale, 5-day blitz across India. We were able to hold 14 press conferences, we were in 240 newspapers, we bought the media with the money that was donated to 10,500 radio announcements and 5,000 TV announcements and this was, maybe, the largest public health campaign in the world, because in 5 days, we were able to inform 700 million people.
Now the key was, that during this newspaper expose, I got most of the newspapers to run the headline “Minister refuses to meet Syringe Guru”, which of course went straight back to head office and he got really annoyed. A couple of weeks later, I was able to return to Delhi, on my own, privately I went to see him and he gave in and passed a law, which came into effect in April 2009. And now with the adoption of that law, it’s growing daily, we’ve got about 40% now of all public hospitals and clinics across India are using auto disable syringes.
And my final bête noire is the UN. I’m not very well received there, and maybe I just move too fast, or actually do something which hasn’t been researched and written about, so they’re not really my greatest supporters. But never the less, I am now working on UN resolutions in the African union, in the east central and southern African countries, and hopefully one day, in the next couple of years, I would like to have a global resolution for the safety, to protect these people under the banner. Not my banner, or my product, but under the banner that we have developed, which we’ve proposed to the industry - called LifeSaver.
So every syringe gets stamped with this in one colour, and then everyone who uses it knows that it is a quality assurance symbol. 50% of injections are unsafe in the world, as I mentioned. One dollar spent now on safe injections results in a $200 treatment cost, (which is new data) which is just coming out of Tanzania, which is very exciting. Because if we can base this on economy, I think we can move it forward very, very fast.
And just to wrap up, since that 2001, since that first syringe that we sold in Cambodia, we have been able to sell 1.8 billion K1 syringes and that has resulted in about 9 million lives saved - so you can imagine we are very proud.
This is the insanity ladies and gentlemen, and this is what we are trying to stop and I think it comes from safer product, better information and then once we’ve done our job, perhaps the governments will do theirs.
Thank you very much.
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Friday, 11 December 2009
Safepoint founder's TED talk shown on CNN site on World AIDS Day
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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
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