Equipment that can be sterilized has been forced out of the market by these disposable things. It is far easier to push disposable product on medical providers and encourage rent-seeking and subscriptions to such things.
It’s exactly the same way with contact lenses. When I was in college in the ’90s, I could get a pair of permanent contact lenses. They would cost a few hundred bucks, but they would last me several years if the prescription didn’t change. They were the same as glasses. You would clean them everyday and disinfect them, and they would serve quite well permanently.
But the contact lens industry decided that wasn’t good enough, and decided that they could sell subscription services for contact lenses that you would need to discard every night.
And those daily wear contact lenses, the disposable kind, basically forced out of the market the permanent ones and now the optometrist regards me as a Martian when I request permanent lenses instead.
You completely ignored human error aspect. Before the blood donation centers used one time use equipment, donors were getting infected with something nasty every now and then. You can sure as hell expect people to commonly forget to properly sanitize those syringes.
Sterilization is* the most strictly controlled process in any hospital. Nobody can just "forget" to sterilize or pick up a used syringe thinking it's sterile.
* Or at least it should be. It seems that Pakistan is different.
> Sterilization is* the most strictly controlled process in any hospital.
As aviation has shown—where human error has been studied for decades—reducing mistakes is difficult and expensive because it requires multiple layers of quality assurance. In countries where labor is costly, especially in healthcare, it has got to actually be cheaper to use single-use equipment, with the added benefit of reducing the risk of infection through that route to zero.
There is also the reality that a sealed package is more of a guarantee of sterility than something that should be autoclaved. Even in the US there have been cases of nasties being passed by inadequate cleaning.
And we had a big scandal locally. Were they doing a shoddy job of colonoscopies? Probably. But genetics left no doubt that they were using one needle per jab, but one syringe per patient. And drawing up from multi-use vials. Stick the hep C patient, in pulling back a bit ends up in the syringe. Discard needle, syringe is still infected. New needle, old syringe, draw from the vial again, vial is now infected.
There is a secured room here where I've been assigned a PIN, but the room's door is unlocked between 6am-6pm. Nevertheless, I always enter my PIN on the pad, or at least try to recall it clearly. Because if you're in the habit of pulling that door open during the day, 8 months later will come a time it is locked, and you won't remember your PIN because you've never ever used it.
The same goes for sterilizing such things in a medical setting. I think HCPs are very accustomed to the disposable and pre-sterilized supplies that they don't even consider an item's sterile status or the need to sterilize it after use. So this is the pitfall that comes with all the disposable stuff: that routine sterilization is forgotten as a skill or as a necessity.
You can still get rigid gas-permeable lenses that last basically forever, I wear them every day. You have to take them out at night and clean them, but you only buy them once (unless you damage or lose them, or your prescription changes).
I share your hate of rent-seeking and subscription culture, but tbf disposable contact lenses are legitimately a nicer product to use. I've done it both ways.
It’s exactly the same way with contact lenses. When I was in college in the ’90s, I could get a pair of permanent contact lenses. They would cost a few hundred bucks, but they would last me several years if the prescription didn’t change. They were the same as glasses. You would clean them everyday and disinfect them, and they would serve quite well permanently.
But the contact lens industry decided that wasn’t good enough, and decided that they could sell subscription services for contact lenses that you would need to discard every night.
And those daily wear contact lenses, the disposable kind, basically forced out of the market the permanent ones and now the optometrist regards me as a Martian when I request permanent lenses instead.