SafePoint Tanzania Awareness Campaign Gets Underway

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The SafePoint supporters reach Uhuru Peak, Tanzania

All-mother group successfully conquers Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness of the dangers of syringe re-use in Tanzania

East Sussex, United Kingdom - The four intrepid supporters of the SafePoint Trust – Anna Koska, Nicoletta Iacobacci, Clare Beale and Catherine English – have recently triumphed in their mission to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. And not only have they completed this gruelling challenge in an impressive time, they are also celebrating being the first all-mother group to climb the feared Western Beach route. Congratulations ladies!

But now the hard work really begins. The SafePoint team has begun rolling out a hard-hitting campaign across Tanzania to raise awareness of the dangers of syringe re-use. Using one syringe to treat many patients is one of the single biggest causes of death in the developing world, and causes millions of infections each year in Africa and the rest of the developing world.

On their descent, the ladies travelled to Dar es Salaam where they called a press conference, attended by 25 major Tanzanian TV and radio channels. They informed their captivated audience why they took on the challenge to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and their decision to raise money to donate single use (AD) syringes to Tanzania. Their climb has raised funds to contribute to their supplies in compliance with the ECSA resolution*.

Famous celebrity and comedian, Masanja, assisted the ladies in the press conference by demonstrating the three-point SafePoint message, taken from the WHO injection safety guidelines as per the diagram below.

New Packet, Used Once, Safely Disposed

Masanja validated the importance of safe injections and said, “I decided to help SafePoint make a public awareness film as I am a proud Tanzanian, and know that in the village where I come from, many people are unaware of unsafe injection practices.

“I hope that this film encourages healthcare workers to use a new syringe each time they give an injection, and that it informs our parents and children on the risks they take if they don’t demand one. To all fans of the Orijino Komedi Show, make sure you never have an unsafe injection again and spread the message for me.”

Yet, despite clear evidence pointing to significant numbers of deaths caused by a lack of injection safety procedures in many hospitals and medical centres in Tanzania, talks to date with Health Ministers in the country have remained unsuccessful. Marc Koska OBE, founder of the SafePoint Trust, originally met with the Hon Prof David Mwakyusa back in March 2010. At this meeting, the Hon Minister gladly accepted the donation of the film from SafePoint, and agreed to create a campaign to air it. But since this meeting, Marc has been met with closed doors and unable to progress with discussions further. For the SafePoint team, it is extremely frustrating, as they are only too aware from their experiences in other countries that public awareness is paramount to the changeover to single-use syringes.

Elections have taken precedence within the Tanzanian Health Authority, with little or no reference given to the unacceptable ‘unsafe injection’ culture. Also this week, Mr Deo Mtasiwa, Chief Medical Officer of Tanzania, stated his belief that no diseases have been spread through injection re-use.

While SafePoint appreciates the positive actions that have taken place in Tanzania to address the problem, such as the training of thousands of nurses, his claim is one that SafePoint rejects. Their view is backed by the announcement at the Annual meeting of The Safe Injection Global Network (SIGN) that a staggering 14% of all HIV infections are a direct result of unsafe injections.

Injection safety needs to move up the agenda, fast. Medical staff urgently need the resources to save lives; not to take them. Cost isn’t the issue - the cost of an AD syringe is 100 Shillings in Tanzania; the cost of a popular soft drink is 500 Shillings. “Mara moja katika maisha, mara nguni ni kifo.” A syringe used once is life. Used twice is death.

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

*Note: The ECSA (East Central Southern African Regions) resolution, passed and proposed by SafePoint in 2007, was signed by all 10 ECSA regions. Countries were to scale up their injection safety programmes by November 2009. SafePoint has already made and donated a public information film, with the support of SafePoint Ambassador, Masanja.

Background Notes to Editors:

Safepoint is a charity set up with a purpose to educate the next generation in safe healthcare.

This is done by delivering hard-hitting public awareness campaigns. We've done this to huge effect in India in 2008, resulting (April 2009) in the Health Minister mandating the use of Auto Disable (AD) syringes throughout all government-run hospitals. To date, Marc Koska, Founder of SafePoint, has been credited with saving well over 9 million lives.

Why Tanzania?

Tanzania is at the forefront of safe healthcare in Africa and will soon be the second country to convert over to Auto Disable (AD) syringes in the ECSA Region. With their policy already in place, trained healthcare workers and a public information film donated by SafePoint featuring Tanzanian celebrity and SafePoint supporter Masanja, they are ready to reduce the country's medical costs and ease the HIV/Hepatitis disease burden.

We climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to kick off Phase One of this new campaign – the raising of public awareness of the dangers of syringe re-use in Tanzania through all forms of media. We'll be visiting schools, orphanages and hospitals to talk with children, teachers and healthcare workers alike, getting the simple message of ‘one injection - one syringe’ across and donating syringes to kick start their participation in the campaign.

Facts and figures on unsafe healthcare

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

• 230,000 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 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 all injections given, world wide, are unsafe
(Source: WHO World Health Organisation)

• A syringe is used on average 4 times in the developing world

• Every 24 seconds, a child dies as a result of an unsafe injection

Ain't No Mountain High Enough!

4 mums climb Kilimanjaro to get 2m syringes donated to Tanzania

Clare Beale, Catherine English, Ginny Simpson and Anna Koska

Four brave mums are aiming high for SafePoint - they plan to climb Kilimanjaro at the end of October raising enough money to donate 2 Million AD syringes to Tanzania.

Marc Koska launched the Climb with the help of David Downard from Mountain Range Restaurants back in May and since then, offers of support have been overwhelming.

Flags will accompany the mums on the climb and are being sold for £5,000. One flag will protect 35,000 people against unsafe healthcare.

For more information or to download a sponsorship pack, email: info@safepointtrust.org

Watch the girls in training: click here.

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The Climb 2010 Tanzania: Marc and Anna Koska interviewed on BBC Sussex Radio

Click to play

Neil Pringle of BBC Sussex Radio interviewed Marc and Anna Koska about The Climb 2010 Tanzania, live, on 16th June 2010, and here's what they said:

Neil: Three mothers from East Sussex are in training to climb one of the world's highest peaks. We are talking about Kilimanjaro; they are going to do this in the Autumn, raising money for the SafePoint Trust, which is a Sussex-based charity which sends essential medical aid overseas. The organization wants to send two million single-use syringes to Tanzania, a country which has one of the world's poorest populations and the largest with HIV. Now Marc Koska set up the SafePoint Trust, his wife Anna is one of the mums who’s doing the challenge. They are both with me here. Hello!
Anna & Marc: Good morning. Hi.

Neil: Good morning. Now, let's start with you Marc, first of all, then we will hear about Kilimanjaro in just a second. Tell us a little bit of background because you have been raising money for a while haven’t you?

Marc: Yes on the charity side, but I got my background by inventing a syringe 20 odd years ago, which we now manufacture around the world in 14 factories and that company is completely separate to the Trust. But what I noticed, even though we had sold a lot (we’ve sold about two billion over the last decade, and saved many lives no doubt), but what I noticed in travelling was that there was a disconnect. The patients and sometimes the staff didn’t know why they were being supplied with this product. So there was a need to fill that gap with information and that was the purpose of setting up the charity.

Neil: Right, so the safe needle was there, but not everybody knew why it was there. It’s presumably to stop infection, stop needles being used twice and all that sort, but that’s an education thing isn’t it? I mean we know more about these things, strangely in this country than they do where they really need to know.

Marc: Yeah, it’s odd – it’s an imbalance completely, yeah.

Neil: Yeah, interesting. How does one invent a new syringe then?

Marc: Well I was wandering around the world and not really knowing what to do with my life and I was 23 years old. I read a newspaper article back in 1984, which predicted that syringes would be a major transmission route for HIV. Sadly that’s now come horrifyingly true, not just HIV but Hepatitis as well; 23 million cases apparently of Hepatitis are caused every year by the re-use of syringes and, of course, horrifyingly, they are used by doctors and nurses, and that’s where the infection’s coming from.

Neil: Is it just that they don’t have alternatives, or are they unaware as well? I mean it seems almost incredible that a doctor doesn’t know the danger of using, re-using needles!

Marc: Yeah, it’s a really weird question. It’s a great question actually but I’m not really sure what the number one reason is. It's usually predicated by no supplies or lack of supplies which then lead them to re-use sometimes, which then gets them into a habit, and the patients don’t object. But you know it's actually true, in Africa, in most African countries, when you go for an injection, you expect to feel a bit queasy for a couple of days afterwards which is sort of a mild septicemia.

Neil: Wow, so having got this on your travels, you thought, 'Well I must see if I can do something about this'. I mean that’s, I have to say – I have to say when I was reading about this last night, I said to my wife, I said there are some very amazing people on the planet. What do we do? What do we do apart from watch football, clean the house? Meanwhile, there are people who are saving lives and I, you know I hope you don’t take your lives for granted because you must have touched so many people's lives.

Marc: Thank you.

Neil: You know, and you’re the second OBE on the program today as well!

Marc: Oh, good.

Neil: The first one was a horror writer by the way.

Marc: Oh yeah.

Neil: He was a good man as well.

Marc: Oh yeah – James Herbert.

Neil: Absolutely. Anna, now was this your idea or did he say, go on climb Kilimanjaro because I need the money?

Anna: "Darling, pay the school fees". No it wasn’t like that. Marc came back from a conference in America and there was an amazing lady who said I’m going to climb (she’s Italian by the way – my Italian accent may turn Scottish – so maybe I shouldn’t bother).

Neil: We like it!

Anna: She said, "I going to climb a mountain. I climb Kilimanjaro. I want to give money to SafePoint." So he came back with this amazing story and I thought, 'Do you know, this might be my opportunity'. There’s a few of my friends and myself who have been watching what SafePoint’s been up to and, for a long time, thinking what we can do to be involved and in order to sort of give back to the system as it were. And this seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.

Neil: Hmm, yes – I’ve heard from people who’ve been up Kilimanjaro before. There’s a lot of altitude sickness involved.

Anna: Yes, yes.

Neil: You know, it’s quite high up, are you ready for that?

Anna: I don’t know if you can ever be ready. I have been told by a number of people it doesn’t matter how fit you are, if it grabs you, it grabs you. So we are talking to a few specialists in altitude sickness and how to sort of acclimatize, and hopefully they can give us a few hints and tips, you know?

Neil: See, when they do Everest, they go up and down it a few times don’t they?

Anna: Yes.

Neil: I can't imagine you would want to do that, you’d say ‘To hell with it, let's just have the sickness – bring it on’.

Anna: No.

Neil: It can be very unpleasant – anyway it’s all for a tremendous cause.

Anna: It is, it is, yes.

Neil: Do you have much time? You sound a busy couple, do you have much time for family and all that sort of stuff?

Anna: We do. It’s amazing - we can squeeze it all in.

Neil: You squeeze it all in. I’m in awe, I’m in awe! What’s the family like then (size)?

Anna: We’ve got three kids, three dogs, four chickens, two cats – and they are all family you understand?

Neil: Which is tremendous stuff. Um now then, when do you actually do the trip then?

Anna: We take off on 26th October. We start climbing around, I think, 28th October and it takes approximately 6 to 7 days to actually reach the summit.

Neil: Well it would be amazing to follow that trip. I don’t know whether you’ve got room in your rucksack for one of our BBC tape recorders, very light things these days. Maybe we could get you to take one of those up and do a little diary for us on the way?

Anna: That’s a great idea – we could do that.

Marc: The idea is that when the girls have summited, they go straight back down to sea level. 1) because they will want to, and secondly….

Anna: ...and have a shower!

Marc: The image is that, or the ideal is that we have a container, one of these 40ft sea containers on the dock in Dar Es Salaam, which we hand over to the ministry with 2 million syringes in, which is obviously what we want to raise the money for. And we’ve set out a little program which we would be happy to explain to anyone, where, with a donation, we want to give a package back, especially on a corporate level if anyone would like to help us whereby we can, for their donation, we can give them a lot of PR and a lot of exposure on websites and in newspapers. And we’ve got some national coverage already agreed, so you know, we hope that that will balance it out and their support can be rewarded with good PR and exposure.

Neil: OK, so it's not just an individual thing; this is a 'corporate opportunity' as they say!

Anna: It is, it is.

Marc: Well we hope so.

Neil: Well, let's point people in the right direction if they want to find out more -SafePointTrust.org is the website or you can call this number: 01825 713 722 and we’ll keep those details here at BBC Sussex. Good luck to both of you, thank you.

Anna: Thank you very much.

Neil: And we will follow it with interest . Cheers!
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SafePoint staff to take on mountain trek

East Grinstead Courier and Observer, 17 June 2010 edition