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History
Product History
Retractable Technologies. Inc. manufactures and markets VanishPoint® automated retraction safety syringes and blood collection devices, which virtually eliminate health care worker exposure to accidental needlestick injuries. These revolutionary devices use a patented friction ring mechanism that causes the contaminated needle to retract automatically from the patient into the barrel of the device, a feature which also prevents reuse. VanishPoint products are distributed in Australia by Scientific Educational Supplies Pty Ltd.
In the late 1980's, Retractable's founder, Thomas J. Shaw, saw a television news segment about a doctor who contracted HIV from an accidental needlestick injury. The doctor complained that design engineers were insensitive and unresponsive to the daily dangers faced by frontline healthcare workers.
Shaw, a mechanical and structural engineer, was struck by the doctor's criticism and felt compelled to act. After spending twelve months developing preliminary design concepts, Shaw was awarded a $50,000 USD grant by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to assist in further developing his design concepts. Later he was awarded a $600,000 USD grant to commercialise the production of one of his retractable syringe designs and to produce 10,000 samples for clinical trials.
In 2004 Retractable Technologies Inc. was awarded a U.S. government contract to supply safety syringes to five African countries under the Global HIV/Aids initiative (President's Emergency Plan). Under the contract, which is the first for safety syringes under this program, Retractable will immediately supply VanishPoint® syringes to Botswana, Cote D'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria.
In November 2005, Retractable Technologies Inc. announced that it had been awarded a second major U.S. Government contract to provide VanishPoint® safety syringes under the President's Global Emergency Plan for AIDS relief. Under the contract, awarded in connection with Phase II of the syringe program, Retractable will supply at least 11.7 million of it's patented automated retraction syringes to Haiti and seven African nations: Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.