This festive season, let’s care for healthcare workers

Hyderabad: Aligned with its commitment towards safety of healthcare workers, city-based BD Medical is organising a pan India campaign ‘Santa Says Stay Sharp Be Safe’ to encourage usage of safety engineered devices among healthcare practitioners.

The campaign, which began on December 20, will continue until December 31 and will spread awareness for safety in hospitals across the city that includes KIMS, Kamineni, Yashoda Somaiguda, Apollo JH, Citizen, Manipal, Apollo Vizag, Rainbow, Fernandez, and Yashoda Secunderabad to name a few.

The initiative focuses on the issues faced by healthcare workers, such as needlestick injuries including exposure to blood borne pathogens like HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, being the highest of all.

Commenting on injuries among healthcare practitioners, Dr Vishnu Reddy, chief operating officer, Yashoda Hospitals, Hyderabad said, “Needle stick injuries are common but preventable occupational hazard in any healthcare setting. Given the increasing number of infections caused by such injuries, the focus is now on primary prevention, which can eventually decrease the number of blood borne pathogen infections.”

“Campaigns like “Stay Sharp, Be Safe” must be conducted more often throughout the country to ensure healthcare worker safety leading to better quality outcomes,” he said.

According to a study India contributes to 30 per cent of the 16 billion injections administered worldwide. Sadly, of these, 63 per cent are estimated to be unsafe due to improper sterilisation, reuse or faulty administration, making them a leading cause of infection to healthcare workers.

Accordingly, needle prick injuries are prominent occupational hazard with the prevalence ranging from 10 per cent to 50 per cent in the studied population.

Another study undertaken at AIIMS Trauma Centre in 2014 showed about 36 per cent of doctors, 14.6 per cent of nurses and 7 per cent of housekeeping staff had accidental needle stick injuries. Moreover, a policy guidance released by the WHO in February 2015 highlighted needle-stick injury as one of the major issues and have advocated for the use of Sharps Injury Protection (SIP) devices.

This policy also provides guidance to key stakeholders that play a critical role in the adoption and implementation of safe injection practices, i.e., in endorsing the policy, manufacturing the devices, ensuring their procurement and distribution at the country level, promoting their correct use by health-care providers and their evaluation in terms of safety and effectiveness.

Vishal Taneja, Business Director-BD Medical, BD in India commented, “With this campaign, we would seek to advance the right spirit of education and training on infection prevention and control, including needle stick and sharps safety, use of safety-engineered devices for better clinical practices and enhance our engagement to protect healthcare workers from sharps injuries in the country.”