Healthcare worker safety pays dividends

The fourth BD Healthcare Worker Safety Summit recently took place in Sandton, with more than 130 healthcare professionals gathering to discuss the importance and necessity of safety in the healthcare sector.

South Africa has an extremely high prevalence of HIV and hepatitis B according to a study conducted by Dr Pieter de Jager, a medical doctor in the Department of Anaesthetics at Wits University, and colleagues at the National Institute for Occupational Health (NIOH).

According to the study, healthcare workers are at particular risk of becoming infected with these and other blood-borne pathogens through workplace exposure, especially needle-stick injuries. “We estimated that the current probability of a doctor or nurse sustaining a needle-stick injury was up to 70 percent a year, depending on the healthcare setting and the experience of the health professional,” said De Jager.

“We also calculated that the lifetime chance of a doctor or nurse acquiring HIV through a needle-stick injury was less than one percent. Conservatively, we estimated that at least 20 doctors and nurses in the public healthcare sector alone contract HIV each year through needle injuries. We could reduce this number by more than half, through training and the provision of safety devices.”

The study used an economic model to assess the cost-effectiveness of safety training and the use of safety-engineered syringes in the South African healthcare sector, and weighed up the costs of providing training and safety devices versus the costs of managing needle injuries, including the provision of post-exposure prophylaxis, absenteeism and possible treatment for HIV.

The researchers found that the provision of safety devices alone would reduce injuries and would be cost-effective, but that the best value for money would result from a combination of safety devices and regular training on safety guidelines for professional staff.

Ian Wakefield, general manager of BD, said there had been gradual progress over the years. “Today a good number of tools [have been created] to protect [staff] that they did not have before, but, if we want to drive national policy on safety in the health sector, healthcare workers themselves need to become agents for change,” said Wakefield.

Dr Habib Somanje, health systems adviser in the WHO South African Country Office, highlighted the wider benefits of injection safety. “Health workers are mobilising for protection against TB and drug-resistant TB in particular. However, we need to ask what other safety issues can be positively influenced by workers’ pro-activeness.”