As you know, safety syringes(ไซริงค์) are priced higher than conventional (unsafe) syringes. But it is shortsighted —and erroneous—to simply compare the purchase price of the safety syringe to that of the conventional syringe.
A much more realistic approach should include the cost of tests to see if accidental needlestick injury victims acquire
a bloodborne disease as a result of the injury. In addition, the cost of safe disposal of the syringe should be included.
Bloodborne diseases are transmitted from one person to another in different ways. Unfortunately, a very efficient method of transmission is with a syringe that is reused or that causes an accidental needlestick injury (NSI). In either case, blood from a patient (which may contain one or more of a host of bloodborne pathogens such as hepatitis or HIV) can contaminate the bloodstream of either another patient or someone else (such as a healthcare worker), often transmitting a serious—perhaps fatal—disease.
Upon the completion of an injection with a safety syringe(ไซริงค์), the needle is controllable and instantly retracted from the patient into the barrel of the syringe. When this happens, the syringe is rendered non-reusable, and the contaminated needle is not available to prick the medical worker.
Most of the HIV/AIDS pandemic traditionally has been attributed to sexual transmission. However, several recent thought-provoking articles in medical journals have presented evidence that much of the transmission actually is caused by dirty needles.[1] Healthcare workers in the U.S. suffer an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 accidental needlestick injuries(สลิ้งฉีดยา) each year.[2] This amounts to one NSI for about every 6,000 injections given with a conventional syringe(สลิ้งฉีดยา).
Whenever a syringe is reused, or when a healthcare worker suffers an accidental NSI, it is imperative that tests be conducted to determine whether or not a bloodborne disease has been contracted. And often the tests must be repeated, because it may take several months before some pathogens can be detected. HIV sometimes lies dormant
in the human body for up to three years. Such tests are expensive: in the U.S., the cost is approximately $3,000.[3]
In instances where a bloodborne disease indeed has been contracted, treatment can be very expensive.Victims of NSI
are usually frontline healthcare workers: doctors and nurses that the world can ill afford to lose. And, of course,
there is no way to monetarily quantify human emotions such as fear and anxiety or potential damage to relationships.
Disposal costs must also be taken into account. This includes the cost of the sharps disposal box plus the cost of transportation to the incineration site and the cost of incineration. For a conventional (unsafe) syringe, the disposal cost is approximately $0.18 each. Activated safety syringes(ไซริงค์) “nest” or pack together much more efficiently than conventional syringes. Any sharps disposal box will hold at least two times as many activated (retracted) safety syringes as conventional syringes.
The actual (or true) cost of a syringe can be calculated as follows:
purchase price + testing cost + disposal cost = actual cost of a syringe
Even if the purchase price of a safety syringe were about two times as much as the purchase price of a conventional syringe(ไซริงค์), the actual cost of the conventional syringe would still be more expensive
When these costs are taken into account, it actually is much less expensive to use a truly effective safety syringe than to use a conventional syringe (or one of the marginal so-called “safety” syringes(สลิ้งฉีดยา) that do not do an effective job of preventing both reuse and NSI). It not only makes good sense to use the safest product, it also makes good economic sense.
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