As long as needles have been around health care delivery – make that about 170 years – fear of them has been a constant companion.
And the current public conversation about vaccine hesitancy has shone a light once again on this ever-present and potentially life-threatening problem. At first, people were thought to be shying away from their local COVID vaccine programs because of political views. And while that may be true for some, now medical experts are stepping forward to change up the conversation, at least for the 27 per cent of us who fear getting a shot.
Any shot. Ever.
Within the last two months articles have appeared in the Globe and Mail and on the CTV.Ca news website (among others) citing medical experts who are trying to solve trypanophobia – needle phobia.
This has nothing to do with politics.
Well-known Canadian medical writer Paul Taylor, in a March 19, 2021 article in the Globe and Mail writes that health experts are concerned that this needle fear will contribute to vaccine hesitancy and prevent some from getting a COVID-19 shot.
In fact, he writes, one in 10 Canadian adults is so fearful of needles that “it actually interferes with their willingness to seek appropriate medical care,” citing Christine Chambers, scientific director of Solutions for Kids in Pain.
Symptoms of trypanophobia include dizziness, fainting spells, anxiety, insomnia, and panic attacks—enough to keep people away from the vaccine queue we watch daily on Canadian news broadcasts. People who instead sit at home, in fear and isolated because they believe they can’t participate in the vaccine solution that will help us return to a more normal life.
But here’s the good news: there’s a made-in-Canada solution–the PKA Softtouch Micro-Needle–just about to raise capital to fund human clinical trials–after two highly successful raises for animal clinical trials.
You can participate in this next PKA Softtouch equity crowdfunding campaign, hosted by leading Canadian equity crowdfunding platform Frontfundr of Vancouver, B.C. for as little as $500. PKA Softtouch Campaign
The Micro-Needle solves many problems, but by far the biggest is the elimination of pain during an injection. Simply put, the Micro-Needle does not hurt. It’s a painless injection system, using shallow delivery into the body’s skin layer, rather than deep into nerves and muscles (which is what syringes do). The tiny needle is also completely invisible, so the specter of a person eyeballing a syringe as it approaches their arm, and then tightening up in anticipatory horror is eliminated.
Gone. No shrinking away. No tears. No panic. Because you can’t fear what you can’t see, or feel.
And while the Micro-Needle, which has begun veterinary clinical trials at the University of Guelph, may be too far from commercialization for this first round of COVID vaccines, within one or two years, we predict that it will be licensed and in production.
The Micro-Needle could be the game changer. It’s small (thumb-sized), pre-filled, and completely disposable. There are no sharps disposals, and no need to pre-draw vaccines from vials, since the Micro-Needle arrives at the vaccination location already filled at pharmaceutical manufacturing sites.
Once the veterinary clinical trials are complete and show, (as trials with earlier versions of the device already have) the efficacy of the device, we expect to strike a licensing arrangement with a veterinary pharmaceutical firm. Then, onto the human clinical trials in 2022, leading us to project profitable licensing agreements and a 2023 potential net income of $1,156,000. Thanks to the device’s usefulness with a wide variety of vaccines and medications (including insulin) we project even larger growth to net income of $4,061,000 by 2024.
To find out more about how you can become a part owner of this exciting new venture, please visit PKA Campaign page.
