The World Health Organization is pushing the use of single-use smart syringes by 2020. This is after the continuous rise of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) rates in the past decade.
Reusing syringes can lead to more than two million people getting infected with infectious diseases like HIV and Hepatitis every year. The WHO admits that the use of new needles would be more expensive but is much cheaper than having the disease and treating it.
The normal syringes used today can be reused but the new ones would prevent the plunger to be pulled back after one injection. The needle cannot be retracted so it cannot be used again.
According to BBC News, more than 16 million injections are done every year and Dr. Selma Khamassi, the head of the WHO team for injection safety said, "This will hopefully help eliminate the 1.7 million new hepatitis B cases, the 300,000 hepatitis C cases and the 35,000 HIV cases every year, and all those we don't have figures for, such as Ebola and Marburg."
The decision of WHO to promote the use of single-use syringes was issued following a mass infection of HIV in a farming community of Roka in Cambodia. What happened in the area baffled WHO experts wherein babies, children and even a 82-year old abbot of a local Buddhist temple, who is celibate, contracted HIV. When they traced what happened, they were surprised that nearly all of them received injections from an unlicensed doctor who was suspected of reusing syringes.
The HIV virus would have been spread from one person to another resulting to a widespread outbreak of the still incurable disease. Four of the victims consisting of three elderly women and a baby have died.
Not only in developing countries, but incidents involving reusing needles happened in developed countries too. In the United States state Nevada, an outbreak of Hepatitis C happened when they traced it to a doctor who used the same syringe to give anesthetic medicines to many patients.
"Injection safety is, I think, the most cost-effective way to prevent all these diseases. If we compare the price of most expensive syringes to the cost of treatment for an HIV case, or a hep C case, there is no comparison," Dr. Khamassi said.
Also, they are recommending the use of sheathed needles to protect health care providers from pricking themselves with the needles. This happened during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
