Inspirational entrepreneur Marc Koska has saved millions of lives and earned himself worldwide recognition through the invention of the single-use syringe.
The healthcare hero, who recently moved into an 11-acre farm on the outskirts of Dittisham with his family, spent 17 years battling to get his auto-disable syringe on the production line.
Despite years of rejection, the 60-year-old persisted in developing his revolutionary product, fighting ignorance, bureaucracy and vested interest every step of the way to create a highly successful and innovative company whose sole motivation is to save lives by eradicating the spread of a killer virus.
From a young age Marc had a mission to do something meaningful with his life.
In the early ‘80s he became aware of the plight of millions of people globally who were carrying the AIDS virus and read that the deadly practice of reusing syringes was spreading the virus like wildfire.
It proved to be a seminal moment.
Marc was 23 years old and after unfocused schooling, working in various jobs, travelling and sailing yachts, he had found his calling.
He had the simple but brilliant idea of a ‘smart syringe’ that locks and breaks after one use, therefore preventing the transmission of disease.
His idea was a game changer. And it could be manufactured on the same machinery for the same cost and used without additional training.
Today 14 factories around the world supply hundreds of millions of the K1 syringe each year and Marc’s invention has been credited with saving more than 10 million lives.
In 2005 Marc created the Safepoint Trust which aims to educate people all over the world on the importance of injection safety and to stop the re-use of syringes.
Having changed WHO (World Health Organisation) policy and best practice on the ground through advocacy and campaigning, he is now a recognized expert in the field.
Marc has received honorary doctorates from Brighton University and the University of Sussex as well as multiple awards including The Economist’s Innovation Award, The Queen’s Award for Enterprise, and the Fogarty Institute for Innovation’s Tech Award.
In 2006 he was awarded an OBE for his contribution to global healthcare.
Helping to reduce the spread of HIV and other blood-borne infectious diseases, Marc achieved his original ambition and has continued his health crusade by inventing a new injection system that was inspired by bee-stings.
He called his new project ApiJect (named after the Latin for a bee, ‘apis’) and shortly before the Coronavirus pandemic received a grant from the American government of 130 million USD to build a prototype factory in South Carolina.
ApiJect has now signed a multi-billion USD agreement with the US government to build a national pandemic response network over a five-year period.
Marc expects that by the end of the year his new-look syringes will be distributed far and wide to help vaccinate billions of people.
He said: “I always had a mission to try and find a big problem in the world, and try and see if I could create, not a complete solution, but maybe an intervention for something.
“After looking at the whole life-cycle of syringes – and actually when you start looking it’s an incredible industry to make such a humble little product – I was able to create the K1 syringe, and 17 years after first getting involved I sold the first one to UNICEF.”
Talking about his incredible struggle to get his product accepted, Marc admitted it had been tough at times.
“I love the process of looking at the problem. I believe if you understand the problem fully it’s a bit like a jigsaw – there’s often one piece missing and it’s normally the solution.
“You keep going because you know that 99 per cent of the people will never look or think that way, so you’ve just got to keep going until you get enough people that give a damn to notice that missing piece.
“The WHO was the biggest challenge, to get them to change course: you’ve got this massive oil tanker and you’ve got to turn it around.
“The reuse of syringes and needles in the world right now kills 1.3million people a year, and causes 20 million cases of lifelong cases like hepatitis and HIV.
“So the prediction in the newspaper from 1984 came true and we ended up with this issue that no-one was addressing and WHO were turning a blind eye to.
“I met Margaret Chang, WHO’s director general, at a conference. She walked into a room where I was so I went up and introduced myself to her.
“She saw me and refused to shake my hand, she put her hand up out in front of her which in Asia – she is Hong Kong Chinese – is the worst insult you can give anyone, turned around and walked out of the room.
“It turned out, long story short, that she considered me a trouble maker.
“I went downstairs for breakfast the next day, found her and stood over her table and said “We need to talk”.
“She threatened to call security but in the end she did agree to talk. I flew to Geneva three weeks later and we sat down one-on-one and I explained my point. She declassified me as a trouble maker and together we worked on a change to global recommendations from WHO on Global safer practices”.
The Stowe-educated entrepreneur is now on a mission to produce a new style of smaller, lighter syringe based on blister technology, and which comes pre-filled to allow patients to self-medicate.
“The idea came when I was standing in our garden where my wife Anna kept bees and one of our bees flew past me. When I saw it I wondered if we could make something that could quantum leap the whole industry, which of course is a dangerous thing to think because you are going to get your legs cut off by existing industry who are protecting their own established yet compromised system.
“But that is what I had done with K1, so I knew this was definitely the answer.”
Marc’s genius idea of pre-filling syringes with medication means that in places where healthcare workers are scarce, medication can be done by the patient themselves or a family member.
It also bypasses the need for wasteful glass vials containing medication to fill old-style syringes.
He said: “Glass vials are incredibly energy inefficient, in most systems 40 per cent of them break during the processing, filling and transport.
“They take months to make, even though they look incredibly simple, because they are a special type of glass called Borosilicate and have to be very accurately formed.
“With my new product we can make a long strip of 25 syringes every three seconds, fully formed, fully filled and sterile, labelled up and ready to go - which is a miracle.
“It’s cheaper, faster and more environmental and uses half the plastic of the old-style syringe.”
Marc describes his new-style syringe as the “Tetra Pak for medicine.”
“The ex-CEO of Tetra Pak is a great friend of mine; he was my first funder and he understood the relevance of moving away from glass.
“Medicine packaged in glass uses 150 year old technology, it needs to come out of glass and go into something much more up-to-date.”
I asked Marc how he felt about being responsible for saving millions of lives.
“You know I’ve been doing it a long time so it’s not a burden but if I am not working to save lives it feels odd.
“Of course, I feel immensely proud that the K1 syringe has been used billions of times and saved millions of lives. That’s a lovely feeling. I’d rather do that than do something else which didn’t have that outcome.
“However, it’s solving the problem, which is the motivation, it’s not because I want to be a lifesaver.
“But I wouldn’t solve problems that didn’t save lives. I am trying to be a mini hero rather than a super hero.”
Selling the majority of his shares in ApiJect has enabled Marc to enjoy a slower pace of life, concentrate on the design aspect of the business and work mostly from his new South Hams home nestled in a sheltered coombe, which he moved into with Anna, a successful artist who has illustrated more than 100 books, and their three children last September.
“We deliberately came here because of the River Dart and Start Bay, we deliberately came here because of the beaches and we deliberately came here because we didn’t want to be near London anymore,” he said.
“I don’t have to fly so much so didn’t need to be near Heathrow. I was flying to two countries a week for 20 years so it was completely exhausting.
“Honestly, two years ago if somebody had said you can live further out than an hour away from Heathrow, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
When he’s not working Marc enjoys racing with fellow Royal Dart Yacht Club members and building wooden kayaks – his most recent creation being a beautiful river-going kayak crafted from 60-year-old walnut.
First published in By The Dart magazine July 2021
