Health Ministry, AOI sign protocol to provide self-destructing syringes

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Mon, 17 Jun 2019 - 09:33 GMT

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Mon, 17 Jun 2019 - 09:33 GMT

FILE - a syringe - Marco Verch Professional/Flickr

FILE - a syringe - Marco Verch Professional/Flickr

CAIRO - 17 June 2019: The Arab Organization for Industrialization (AOI) and the Ministry of Health signed a protocol of cooperation, which aims at achieving self-sufficiency of self-destructing syringes and providing all the needs of the Ministry of Health concerning advanced medical equipment.

Head of the AOI Abdel Moneim al-Tarras stressed the importance of participating in enhancing local industrialization in accordance with the directives of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi to transfer and localize technology and increase local medical industries.

Minister of Health Hala Zayed praised the efforts of the AOI to increase the local manufacturing rates in the medical industries and its commitment to the delivery times and after-sales service matching international quality standards.

The Health Ministry announced in April that regular syringes will be totally banned and will be substituted by self-destructing syringes by July 2020.

“The regular syringes will be substituted by self-destructing ones to prevent reusing these syringes [regular ones] and to reduce disease infection,” said Health Ministry spokesperson Khaled Megahed.

The decision came to maintain the achievements of the "100 Million Health" initiative, which was launched by President Sisi to eradicate Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and chronic diseases, he added.

The ministry also decided to use only the SoloShot syringes for polio vaccinations. By applying the new decision, Egypt will produce 2 billion syringes annually, the spokesperson said

To wipe out diseases transmitted through reusing syringes, the Ministry of Health in cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) has adopted Safety Injection Program since 2015 to cut down the reuse of regular syringes, which was one of the main causes of the spread of Hepatitis C Virus.

Former Minister of Health Adel Al-Awady said in a press conference in 2015 that 8-10 million Egyptians are being infected with Hepatitis C due to unsafe injection.

In 2015, the Egyptian government has announced a plan to establish a factory to produce self-destruct syringes.


Additional reporting by Walid Abdelsalam

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