Mountain Range Restaurants celebrate their 5th Anniversary at The Swan, Forest Row, whilst supporting Marc Koska’s local charity, The SafePoint Trust.
Sponsored climb of Mount Kilimanjaro announced to make Tanzania a safe injection country.
Sponsored climb of Mount Kilimanjaro announced to make Tanzania a safe injection country.
Forest Row, East Sussex - Marc Koska OBE and his charity, The SafePoint Trust, recently launched an exciting new project for Tanzania at The Swan Mountain Range Restaurant in Forest Row during Mountain Range’s 5th anniversary celebrations.
Generously supported by David Downard, Mountain Range Restaurants CEO, guests were warmly invited to congratulate the company for a successful 5 years in business as well as to celebrate Marc Koska’s achievements in global healthcare and to support his charity The SafePoint Trust on their next venture: “The Climb Tanzania 2010”.
A team of three mothers from East Sussex have taken up the challenge to climb Mount Kilimanjaro to raise enough money (£100,000) to enable The SafePoint Trust to donate 2 million AD (Auto Disable) syringes to Tanzania. This will enable Tanzania to kick start this safe injection healthcare project and so become a safe injection country. They plan to present the donation to Tanzania’s minister for Health and Social Welfare, Prof David Mwakyusathe, in person shortly after they finish the climb, which is set to take place at the end of October 2010. It is likely to take about 7 days to reach the summit. The climbers, who will very quickly have to get used to high altitudes, are:
- Anna Koska (Marc’s wife and SafePoint Supporter)
- Ginny Simpson (SafePoint)
- Clare Beale (SafePoint Supporter)
The SafePoint Trust is encouraging local businesses to buy a flag for £5,000 each. All flags will journey up to the summit of 19,365 ft and be photographed with the climbers, capturing their euphoric moment. Those businesses which buy flags will of course feature heavily in all publicity that surrounds the climb, since collectively, by donating 2 Million syringes to Tanzania, they will ensure that a total of 700,000 people will receive safe injections.
Why Tanzania?
Tanzania is at the forefront of safe healthcare in Africa and is to become one of only two countries converted to using AD syringes in the ECSA Region (Eastern, Central and Southern Africa). With their policy already in place, trained healthcare workers and a public information film produced and donated by SafePoint, the country is ready to reduce its medical costs and ease its HIV/Hepatitis disease burden. More importantly, with this donation in place, Tanzania will have sufficient AD syringes to stock all 26 regions throughout the entire country from the very start of this initiative.
Facts and figures on unsafe healthcare
• Each and every year due to unsafe injections there are:
o 230,000 HIV Infections
o 1,000,000 Hepatitis C Infections
o 21,000,000 Hepatitis B Infections
o Resulting in 1,300,000 deaths each year
(Source: WHO World Health Organisation)
• Some 17 billion medical injections are given each year, and 7 billion of these are unsafe
(Source: Hutin 2003)
• Malaria kills 1,000,000 - so this silent epidemic – unsafe injections - kills even more people each year
(Source: WHO World Health Organisation)
• In Africa, 20 million medical injections, contaminated with blood from a patient with HIV, are administered every year
(Source: Reid 2009)
• At least 50% of injections given, globally, are unsafe
(Source: WHO World Health Organisation)
• A syringe is used on average 7 times in the developing world
• Every 24 seconds, a child dies as a result of an unsafe injection
For more information about Mountain Range Restaurants, visit: http://www.mountainrangerestaurants.co.uk
About Marc Koska OBE and The SafePoint Trust
Marc Koska OBE has worked tirelessly over the last 25 years on global healthcare with a particular focus on injection safety. After spending years researching the syringe industry, Marc invented an AD (Auto Disable) syringe - the K1 - that physically prevents re-use. To date, Marc and the K1 have been credited with saving well over 9 million lives, but Marc knew from the start that product alone would not stop this silent epidemic. So he founded The SafePoint Trust in 2006. The main purpose of SafePoint is to use information to solve this very basic healthcare need. This is done by delivering hard-hitting public awareness campaigns. Marc and SafePoint work hard to ensure that the public are educated with this lifesaving message, coupled with extensive lobbying for legislative changes at ministerial level, to ensure that this basic human right is restored. For more information, visit: http://www.marckoska.com and http://www.safepointtrust.org
For more information, please contact:
Ginny Simpson
SafePoint Trust UK
The Granary
Pippingford
East Sussex
TN22 3HW
+44 (0)1825 713722
info@safepointtrust.org
http://www.safepointtrust.org
Press release submitted by: WorldWidePR.net
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