Anna Koska
Dear all,
In case you didn't know, I'm due to fly out on 25th October to Tanzania.... to climb that big volcano they've got there!
I'm not doing it for fun (it's cold up there!); I'm actually doing it, along with three other women, in the name of
SafePoint.
SafePoint is a charity that was set up with the purpose of educating 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 (in April 2009) with the Health Minister mandating the use of Auto Disable syringes throughout all government-run hospitals.
To date, Safepoint is credited with saving well over 9 million lives!
Clare Beale, Catherine English, Ginny Simpson and Anna Koska
Why Tanzania?
Tanzania is at the forefront of safe healthcare in Africa and is one of only two countries that has converted to Auto Disable syringes in the ECSA Region (Eastern, Central and Southern Africa). 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.
We're climbing this mountain to kick off Phase 1 of this new campaign. We'll be visiting schools, orphanages and hospitals to talk to children, teachers and nurses alike... getting the simple message across: "One injection - One syringe" and donating syringes to kickstart their participation.
Some 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
Thank you so very much for your help on this,
Anna x
PS For more information, check out this short video that was made regarding Tanzania:
.
Catherine English, Nicoletta Iacobacci, Anna Koska and Clare Beale on Uhuru Peak, the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, 19,341 ft above sea level - 3 November 2010
The Kili Mums celebrating their achievement with new-found friends
