Campaign to focus on safety of healthcare workers

Becton Dickinson, a global medical technology company, is conducting the campaign to spread awareness of healthcare workers’ safety across hospitals such as Mehta Hospital, Dr Kamakshi Memorial, KG Hospital and Apollo Madurai.

While such a campaign was initiated last year as well, this campaign will focus on the issues faced by health care workers this year, which include needle stick injuries, posing a risk of exposure to blood borne pathogens such as HIV/ AIDS and hepatitis, being the highest of all.“Ensuring the safety of all healthcare workers is a must. While many hospitals do not provide them with gloves, there are some hospitals which also lack proper segregation systems,” said Gajalakshmi, an activist.

A study conducted by the National Surveillance System for Healthcare Workers (NASH), found that healthcare workers, including nurses, doctors, technicians, etc., are at a serious risk of acquiring injuries from various hospital equipment had also found that the nation contributes to 30 per cent of the 16 billion injections administered worldwide, of which, 63 per cent are estimated to be unsafe, due to improper sterilisation, reuse or faulty administration.

The study had found that 36 percent of the injuries take place in Inpatient units. Stating that they take this issue very seriously, Dr Narayana Babu, Dean, Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital (RGGGH), said, “All sharp equipment like needles are destroyed by the needle destroyer in the ward itself. The needle will be burnt out completely.

This has been implemented to ensure our staff do not get injured.”

He said that sharp items like glass, test tubes and burnt out needles are segregated separately.

“They are separately lifted by the healthcare workers, to whom we have provided very thick gloves,used during post mortems. Besides that, we also immunise the healthcare workers with Hepatitis B vaccine,” he added, stressing on the need for all hospitals and PHCs to follow the same.