A decades-long push by British entrepreneur Marc Koska of SafePoint Trust to combat the infections and more than 1 million deaths caused by needle re-use has led to the World Health Organization introducing a mandate to adopt Koska’s K-1 syringe, which he designed in 1997. Koska made the announcement at TEDMED 2014 in Washington, D.C.
In a message to the audience, WHO Assistant Director General Dr Marie-Paule Kieny, confirmed in a video that the WHO mandate will be formally announced in Geneva October 30, in a meeting of syringe manufacturers. In the next three years, all health systems will be required to switch over to auto-disable syringes, according to a company statement.
In a video to draw attention to the problem, Koska set a secret camera up in a clinic. The audience watched in horror as a nurse uses a syringe to take blood from an HIV-AIDS patient only to use the same needle to take blood from a 1-year-old child. The needle gets used four times on four patients.
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In Africa, about 20 million medical injections contaminated with blood from a patient with HIV are administered every year, according to the company statement.
