The World Health Organisation (WHO) has today called for all countries to transition to the use of "smart syringes", which break after a single use, by 2020.
The reuse of normal syringes often leads to the spread of deadly diseases. A study sponsored by the WHO in 2014 found that in 2010 alone, unsafe injections led to the infection of 33,800 people with HIV, 1.7 million with the hepatitis B virus, and up to 315,000 with the hepatitis C virus.
The new policy implemented by the WHO aims to ensure safer injection practices by preventing the multiple use of the same syringe.
The new devices recommended by the WHO will either be engineered with a weak spot in the plunger, causing them to break if the user pulls back on the plunger, or come with a metal clip that stops the plunger from being moved back. Another model stops the needle retracting into the syringe barrel after the injection. "Adoption of safety-engineered syringes is absolutely critical to protecting people worldwide from becoming infected with HIV, hepatitis and other diseases," said director of the WHO HIV/AIDS department, Dr Gottfried Hirnschall. "This should be an urgent priority for all countries".
The WHO is calling on all countries to use these "smart needles" exclusively by 2020. The few exceptions to its use will be cases where such a device would be detrimental to a procedure.
Inventor of the non-reusable K1 auto-disable syringe and WIRED Health 2015 speaker Marc Koska, who has spent 30 years campaigning for the use of these types of syringes, spoke of how important it was for WHO to have set out these rules. "We needed the WHO to draw a line in the sand to give the world guidance,"
Koska told WIRED.co.uk. "With this announcement, we know what the rules and the baseline is."
Koska's invention is the same price as a regular syringe, and as it is used in the same way as a normal needle, it requires no additional training for medical workers.
Although it took Koska 17 years to sell his first K1 auto-disable syringe, he has already sold five billion, and is confident that these "smart syringes" will soon replace normal ones. "I think we will see a massive decline in three to five years [of the regular syringe]," says Koska. "They will replace the existing syringes, and instead of making 100 million bad syringes, they will make 100 million good ones".
Unsafe injection practices have caused irreparable damage to communities worldwide. In December 2014, more than 200 children and adults living near Cambodia's second largest city, Battambang, tested positive for HIV.
In order to prevent the rapid-fire spread of diseases through erroneous syringe use, the WHO is currently urging manufacturers to expand production of these "smart" syringes as soon as possible.
With 13 manufacturers in countries such as China, Indonesia, and Turkey, Koska is confident that both supply and demand will build for these "smart" syringes, and that more manufacturers worldwide will turn to producing them in a bid to prevent the needless spread of infections.
Marc Koska will be speaking at WIRED Health 2015
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
