Smart syringes that break after one use should be used for injections by 2020. BBC News reports that this World Health Organisation (WHO) announcement comes as reports show that reusing syringes is leading to more than 2m people being infected with diseases including HIV and hepatitis each year. The new needles are more expensive, but the WHO says the switch would be cheaper than treating the diseases. Normal syringes can be used again and again. But the smart ones prevent the plunger being pulled back after an injection or retract the needle so it cannot be used again.
The people of the farming community of Roka in Cambodia are, meanwhile, living through exactly the nightmare scenario that the WHO wants to stamp out with the new policy. In wooden huts and farmhouses dotted among paddy fields, families are struggling to cope with the bombshell of a sudden and frightening mass infection of HIV. The report notes that to the astonishment and shock of this rural backwater, babies, schoolchildren and even the 82-year-old abbot of the local Buddhist temple, who is celibate, have all tested HIV-positive.
And there is one common factor that links them, directly or indirectly: nearly all of them received injections from an unlicensed doctor suspected of reusing his syringes. The virus would have been spread from one patient to another, resulting in an escalating tally of infections that now stands at 272, with further rises expected as more tests are carried out.
[link url="http://www.bbc.com/news/health-31550817"]Full BBC News report[/link]
[link url="http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/injection-safety/en/"]WHO announcement on injection safety[/link]