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How to Save a Million Lives

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by Joshua Robinson

A lack of a college degree or any engineering training didn’t stop Marc Koska, a speaker at The Daily Beast’s upcoming Reboot America conference, from seeing a problem—millions dying from reused needles—and doing something about it.

Marc Koska had always wanted to dig up one great idea, one major strategy for helping people in a global way. He didn’t know what it would look like or where it would come from. Like any cloud-headed student or barstool idealist, he just wanted to change the world.

Marc Koska

For the first 23 years of his life, Koska didn’t look around especially hard. The day after he graduated from the prestigious Stowe School in Buckingham, England, already set to forgo college, Koska became a garbage man. Just to pick up some money through the summer, not because of any calling in public sanitation. When he’d had enough of collecting trash, he looked at his options again and thought, “Well, I could go do something normal, which wasn’t really me. Or I could follow my nose and get on a train first.”

He chose the latter. For the next four years, aimless wandering carried him around the world, at times working on yachts and in ski resorts, until it landed him in front of a newspaper article one day in 1984. “It simply said, ‘One day syringes will be a major cause of the spread of HIV,’” he said in a telephone interview from England. “Sadly, that’s come horrifyingly true. Now we have a situation where, potentially, AIDS is spread as much by medical devices and poor practice as anything else.”

Indeed, unsafe injections are as serious as any epidemic in the developing world. According to a 2009 World Health Organization report, some 40 percent of injections worldwide are given with syringes and needles that are being reused without sterilization, causing an estimated 1.3 million deaths every year. HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C are the main offenders. Educating patients to demand new needles is still a critical issue, as is the prevalence of dangerous medical practices—doctors who convince their patients they are breaking out fresh ones by rustling wrappers under their desks or nurses simply following orders.

“We’re told to,” one nurse in Faridabad, India, told the Times of London in 2009. “They tell us to use the syringes sometimes two times, three times, 10 times. I have seen them reused 30 or 40 times.”

“They are accustomed like this,” she added, referring to the doctors at her hospital. “They have practiced this way always, and they will continue. It may be they think if they reuse [syringes] they will save money.”

But the problem does not only stem from the economic interests of health-care providers.

"In developing countries, people go see the doctor and you can't get them out unless you give them an injection," said Dr. Ernest Drucker, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at Columbia University's School of Public Health. He cited a study dating as far back as the 1960s that showed that 80 percent of households in Uganda had a syringe, adding, "They feel like they haven't been treated if they don't get an injection. 'Magic shots,' they call them."

A syringe and needles in an Indian hospital, waiting to be reused

It is with these conditions unfolding throughout the developing world, that the idea Koska had been looking for began to crystallize 26 years ago. And by 1997, it turned into a patent for one of the first auto-disable syringes that also worked for curative injections. The name may sound complicated, but the idea is beautifully simple. How do you make sure people don’t use syringes twice? Make them impossible to refill. The K1, as Koska dubbed it, is equipped with a locking ring in the bottom of the barrel, so that when the plunger is fully depressed it stays there. Trying to pull the plunger back would snap the ring and effectively break the syringe.

The K1 model is not the only auto-disable syringe out there. When he first started working on it, there were more than 250 other patents around, and by the time he registered his, that number had grown to about 1,000. Of those, however, Koska says only about 20 had been made into prototypes and all of them were designed specifically for the small doses used in immunization. His design was also suitable for curative purposes, meaning the K1 could handle a whole range of doses.

Ultimately, it was a low-tech solution in a medical environment that is growing ever more expensive and sophisticated. Koska’s answer wasn’t a revolutionary apparatus, it was a small adjustment to existing technology with potentially massive impact. Not to mention a price tag for the developing world—K1 syringes sell for 5 cents, while many others go for as much as a $1 apiece.

“I always understood that what I was doing when I first came up with the design concept was going backward against the stream of thought,” says Koska. “The 270-odd patents, even 25 years ago, were all more complicated. I realized that none of them were going to get off the ground, because they were over-engineered. And over-engineering costs money to produce. I deliberately went to the simple end of the spectrum.”

Before he could even begin considering a design, Koska had to figure out exactly what he was dealing with. All he had in 1984 was a high-school science background and a newspaper clipping. So he spent over two years traveling, reading, and pestering anyone he could find who knew something about public health and had the technical know-how to help him. “I don’t think I even took any notes,” he says. “I just kept asking questions. I’d end up at the World Health Organization and ask them 20 questions about a trip I’d just taken to Kenya and watching immunization campaigns,” Koska says. “It was very random. But it built up a picture for me.”

Seventeen years after the idea first dawned on him, Koska sold his first syringe.

During that time, his efforts to popularize it did not make him any friends. Rival manufacturers, Koska suspects, were not especially pleased with his crashing the market. His first licensee in the developing world was suddenly and mysteriously bought out by an anonymous party and then bulldozed to the ground. Another factory in India simply failed to sell any. Finally, in late 2001, UNICEF placed an order. And soon after, he saw one of his syringes being used for the first time in Cambodia. (UNICEF has since made it a requirement of its campaigns to only use auto-disable syringes.)

Today, Koska runs Star Syringe, the company that owns his patents, alongside a nonprofit called Safe Point, which he started in 2006 for lobbying and education. His licensees are on the verge of selling their 2 billionth unit. Production is up to about 2 million a day, giving Star Syringe a 1 to 2 percent market share of all the syringes manufactured around the world, auto-disable and standard.

But beyond the worldwide numbers, Koska says that the real effect can be seen in places like the hospital in Tanzania, where the average stay has plummeted from seven days to three.

The only change it made was switching syringes.

Taken from The Daily Beast
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SafePoint's website has been completely redesigned

Hope you like it....

Women take on Kilimanjaro for charity

A WOMAN from Henley is hoping to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania to help the health of the country’s people.

Catherine English, of Cromwell Road, and three other women will be raising money for SafePoint, a charity that is trying to start a safe injection healthcare programme by donating two million sterile disposable syringes.

The charity was founded by Marc Koska, who is married to one of the other women taking part and does business with Mrs English’s husband Nick, a Bremont watchmaker.

Mrs English said she jumped at the chance to become involved in the climb later this month when another woman dropped out. She said: “As well as climbing the mountain, we will be visiting schools, orphanages and hospitals to educate children, nurses and teachers in safe and sterile injections.

“Unsafe injections can lead to HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and malaria and the Tanzania campaign aims to ease the burden of these diseases.

“A syringe costs just 7p. The simple message is ‘one injection — one syringe’.”

Mrs English, who has three children, Elodie, three, and twins Euan and Capucine, five, who attend Trinity school in Henley, will be climbing with Anna Koska, Clare Beale and Nicoletta Lacobacci, all from East Sussex. She has been training five or six times a week and meeting the other women once a month to do a big climb or walk.

She said: “We were advised to start working on our upper leg strength, back strength and core stability. We’ve been walking and cycling up hills and generally bulking up our legs.”

The women hope to raise between £10,000 and £20,000 for the K1 syringes, which were invented by Mr Koska.

One way of raising money is by “selling” flags to be taken to the top of the 19,334ft volanic mountain and photographed with the quartet.

To make a donation, visit http://www.justgiving.com/TheClimb-Tanzania2010

Taken from the Henley Standard

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See also "Local charity SafePoint to scale dizzy heights in October"
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Local charity SafePoint to scale dizzy heights in October

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Training hard in the Ashdown Forest

Four brave mums from the Crowborough and Uckfield area are flying out to tackle the daunting challenge of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro this October to raise funds for the SafePoint Trust which is based in the heart of Ashdown Forest.

The SafePoint Trust is a charity set up to tackle the global problem of syringe re-use, which the World Health Organisation (WHO) credits with killing millions of otherwise healthy people each year. Unclean syringes are used repeatedly in surgeries and clinics in developing countries to administer vaccines and medicines. This is either to save costs, or because the doctor is unaware of the severe health implications this practice can have, as dirty needles can quickly and easily pass lethal diseases like Hepatitis and HIV.

The SafePoint Trust has single-handedly saved nearly 10 million lives through campaigning for safe injection practices in countries across the world, including India and Africa.

This climb will raise money to supply single-use needles to Tanzania, and will be attempted by Anna Koska, Clare Beale, Catherine English and Nicoletta Lacobacci. Good luck girls!

To find out more, or to make a gratefully received donation, please click here.

Taken from crowboroughpeople.co.uk, written by Rebecca_H

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See also "Women take on Kilimanjaro for charity"
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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.

Photos by Hy Money. See also Hy Money's photos on Facebook.

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

Marc Koska OBE launches The Climb Tanzania 2010

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
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Marc Koska OBE Launches Safe Injection Project at Mountain Range Restaurants’ 5th Anniversary

Ginny Simpson, Clare Beale, Marc and Anna Koska
(photo by Hy Money)

Mountain Range Restaurants celebrate their 5th Anniversary at The Swan, Forest Row, whilst supporting Marc Koska’s local charity, The SafePoint Trust.

Sponsored climb of Mount Kilimanjaro announced to make Tanzania a safe injection country.

Forest Row, East Sussex - Marc Koska OBE and his charity, The SafePoint Trust, recently launched an exciting new project for Tanzania at The Swan Mountain Range Restaurant in Forest Row during Mountain Range’s 5th anniversary celebrations.

Generously supported by David Downard, Mountain Range Restaurants CEO, guests were warmly invited to congratulate the company for a successful 5 years in business as well as to celebrate Marc Koska’s achievements in global healthcare and to support his charity The SafePoint Trust on their next venture: “The Climb Tanzania 2010”.

A team of three mothers from East Sussex have taken up the challenge to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise enough money (£100,000) to enable The SafePoint Trust to donate 2 million AD (Auto Disable) syringes to Tanzania. This will enable Tanzania to kick start this safe injection healthcare project and so become a safe injection country. They plan to present the donation to Tanzania’s minister for Health and Social Welfare, Prof David Mwakyusathe, in person shortly after they finish the climb, which is set to take place at the end of October 2010. It is likely to take about 7 days to reach the summit. The climbers, who will very quickly have to get used to high altitudes, are:

• Anna Koska (Marc’s wife and SafePoint Supporter)
• Ginny Simpson (SafePoint)
• Clare Beale (SafePoint Supporter)
  

Fund raising

The SafePoint Trust is encouraging local businesses to buy a flag for £5,000 each. All flags will journey up to the summit of 19,365 ft and be photographed with the climbers, capturing their euphoric moment. Those businesses which buy flags will of course feature heavily in all publicity that surrounds the climb, since collectively, by donating 2 Million syringes to Tanzania, they will ensure that a total of 700,000 people will receive safe injections.

David Downard with Marc Koska
(photo by Hy Money)

Why Tanzania?

Tanzania is at the forefront of safe healthcare in Africa and is to become one of only two countries converted to using AD syringes in the ECSA Region (Eastern, Central and Southern Africa). With their policy already in place, trained healthcare workers and a public information film produced and donated by SafePoint, the country is ready to reduce its medical costs and ease its HIV/Hepatitis disease burden. More importantly, with this donation in place, Tanzania will have sufficient AD syringes to stock all 26 regions throughout the entire country from the very start of this initiative.

Facts and figures on unsafe healthcare

• Each and every year due to unsafe injections there are:

o 23,000 HIV Infections
o 1,000,000 Hepatitis C Infections
o 21,000,000 Hepatitis B Infections
o Resulting in 1,300,000 deaths each year
(Source: WHO World Health Organisation)

• Some 17 billion medical injections are given each year, and 7 billion of these are unsafe
(Source: Hutin 2003)

• Malaria kills 1,000,000 - so this silent epidemic – unsafe injections - kills even 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, globally, are 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

For more information about Mountain Range Restaurants, visit: http://www.mountainrangerestaurants.co.uk

About Marc Koska OBE and The SafePoint Trust

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 he founded The SafePoint Trust in 2006. The main purpose of SafePoint is to use information to solve this very basic healthcare need. 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 legislative changes at ministerial level, to ensure that this basic human right is restored. For more information, visit: http://www.marckoska.com and http://www.safepointtrust.org

For more information, please contact:

Ginny Simpson
SafePoint Trust UK
The Granary
Pippingford
East Sussex
TN22 3HW

+44 (0)1825 713722
info@safepointtrust.org
http://www.safepointtrust.org

Press release submitted by: WorldWidePR.net
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Marc Koska: The Man Who Saved 9 Million Lives

Marc Koska, founder of The SafePoint Trust was interviewed for an article entitled 'Marc Koska: The Man Who Saved 9 Million Lives' in the current issue of Peter Gillham's magazine Organic Connections.

The article starts:
"Unique is a good word to describe Marc Koska. 'Since I was a kid, I always wanted to get involved in a large intervention on a big scale,' he told Organic Connections. 'I was always looking for something. If I had lived 200 years ago, I would have wanted to be the guy who killed all the rats in the Black Death. And I started having that drive when I was about six.'

Organic Connections: Marc Koska: The Man Who Saved 9 Million Lives

Unlike many others, Marc never forgot his dream; as a young adult, he was always on the lookout—and one day he stumbled upon it. 'Years went by and I didn’t really settle into anything because I was still waiting for my big moment,' he recounted. 'Then in May 1984, I read a newspaper article that discussed the fact that reused syringes would be a major transmission route for HIV. That was exactly the bit that I was looking for.' Marc was 23 at the time."

To read the full article visit the Organic Connections website.

For more information on Marc, his life and activities, please visit his website at www.marckoska.com.

For further data on Star Syringes, see their website at www.starsyringe.com.

To learn more about SafePoint Trust, visit www.safepointtrust.org.

Marc Koska is Joint Winner of the Dezeen Applause Award 2009

Marc Koska,OBE - (Joint) Design Person Most Deserving of Applause 2009

Designers Marc Koska and Studio Makkink & Bey have been awarded joint first place in Dezeen's competition to find the person most deserving of applause for their work in design in 2009, organised in collaboration with Laikingland, makers of the Applause Machine.

On November 30th, 2009, Dezeen - the world's most influential online architecture and design magazine - announced its competition in collaboration with Laikingland - makers of beautifully crafted kinetic objects - to find the person most deserving of applause for their work in design in 2009. The prize: a Laikingland Applause Machine.

Dezeen readers were asked to nominate, by leaving a comment on the Dezeen site, the most important, influential, controversial or simply the most lovely design person of the year. The designer with the most nominations together with the reader who submited the best reason for nominating the winning designer were both promised an Applause Machine as their prize.

Marc Koska OBE with his prize, a Laikingland Applause Machine

Submissions were judged by Marcus Fairs of Dezeen and Applause Machine designer, Martin Smith. The competition closed on December 16th, 2009 and the winners were as follows:

• Joint winners of the Design Person Most Deserving of Applause 2009 award: Marc Koska, OBE - designer of the K1 non-reusable auto-disable syringe which saves lives by preventing the transmission of disease; and design studio Studio Makkink & Bey.

• Dezeen reader winner was Michael Wigle for the nomination he made for Marc on November 30th, 2009 which is reproduced here:
  

Marc Koska – The non-reusable K1 auto-disable syringe

As a designer, I see invention and design as a solution to a problem. Sometimes we as designers create a problem, or a set of problems to find a solution to. Then there are the big, real life problems that plague many people from around the planet that us as designers try and find a single solution for. We perpetually complicate the world by not finding answers to overlooked problems in our own quest for fame.

Marc Koska may have designed the most important device no one has ever heard of. His syringe has the ability to save millions of lives and revolutionize medicine for developing AND developed nations. He deserves to be noticed and recognized not only because of his creation, but so his creation can be pushed to the forefront and noticed.

A hypodermic syringe that can only be used once, may save as many people lives as vaccines had once 100 years ago. Please award Marc Koska and help spread the word of his simple, yet powerful design. There are at least 1.3 million people in this world who can stand up and applaud this noble effort.

http://www.ted.com/talks/marc_koska_the_devastating_toll_of_syringe_reuse.html

"Many thanks to everyone who voted for me," said Marc in a tweet.
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Nikon Owner magazine captures Marc’s work in India

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Single Use - A Modern Morality Tale by Gillian Greenwood, Nikon Owner magazine -

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.

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:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/marc_koska_the_devastating_toll_of_syringe_reuse.html

• 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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