Preventing Needle Stick Injuries

Healthcare-worker Safety - Injection safety campaign

Health-care workers are at increased risk of infection with bloodborne pathogens because of occupational exposure to blood and other body fluids. Most exposures among health-care workers are caused by percutaneous injuries with sharp objects contaminated with blood or body fluids.

As per WHO reports -

1. 2 million healthcare workers experience percutaneous exposure to various infectious diseases every year.
2. The main cause of 39% of Hepatitis C, 37.6% of Hepatitis B and 4.4% of AIDS in Health-Care Workers is needlestick injuries.

Health-care workers are frequently exposed to percutaneous injuries with contaminated sharps, which cause a large proportion of all HCV, HBV and HIV infections in this group. These infections could largely be prevented, as shown by the lower numbers of infections in regions where efforts have been made to reduce such exposures.


What is a Safe Injection

A safe injection is defined as one that does not harm the recipient, the provider or the community.

Unsafe injections include those that lead to infections in injection recipients, or in providers before, during or after injections, as well as injections by contaminated sharps that have been improperly disposed of in the community and that lead to infection. This also necessisates the proper training of injection disposal and other Biomedical waste disposal

Needle-stick injuries are most often associated with the following activities:

1. Sudden patient movement during the injection
2. Recapping needles
3. Transferring body fluid between containers
4. Failing to dispose of used needles properly in a puncture-proof safety box

3 main Steps for Healthcare Worker safety

1. Immunization against HBV
2. Procedures to prevent percutaneous injuries
3. Postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) to prevent the development of disease.

While secondary prevention of HCV and HIV infection associated with sharps
injuries is expensive and requires a strong health system, simple measures have been
effective in the primary prevention of sharps injuries. Some examples are:

• Avoid unnecessary injections. Reducing the number of injections also reduces the opportunities for needle-stick injuries, as fewer sharps are handled.
• Safely manage sharps waste. This includes collecting contaminated sharps waste immediately after use (without recapping the needle), and using puncture-proof sharps containers that will not leak liquids.
• Immunize at-risk health-care workers against Hepatitis B. Immunization of health-care workers at risk of sharps injuries reduces the proportion of workers susceptible to this infection, and thus the number of infections.
• Use engineering controls, such as autodisposable syringes, needle-free devices, and retractable or sheathed needles.
• Provide personal protective equipment, such as gloves, gowns, masks etc.
• Train and inform workers on the risks of transmission of bloodborne pathogens and on safe practices to combat transmission.

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Download PDF issued by WHO regarding Preventing Needle Stick Injuries. Source : WHO