May 24, 1999
Cosponsor HR 1899, The Health Care Worker Needlestick Prevention Act
Dear Colleague:
We are writing to urge you to join us in cosponsoring HR 1899, the Health Care Worker Needlestick Prevention Act of 1999, to protect health care workers from preventable needlestick injuries.
Each year, more than 800,000 health care workers suffer needlestick injuries. Some of those injuries inevitably cause severe health consequences -- HIV, Hepatitis B and C, and other infectious diseases. The technology exists to prevent those needlesticks. Our health care workers should no longer have to risk their lives in the process of protecting our lives.
Don't take it from us though, read the words of Karen Daley, a nurse for more than two decades who recently learned that she was infected by a workplace injury:
Last July, I sustained a needlestick injury while working in the emergency room of the hospital where I worked for more than twenty years. And this January, I was informed that I was infected with the HIV and hepatitis C viruses as a result of this needlestick. I can't describe for you how one moment -- the moment I reached my gloved hand over a needlebox to dispose the needle I had used to draw blood -- has devastated my life. That one moment in time changed many things for me. In addition to the emotional turmoil it has created for myself, my family, my friends and colleagues --it has cost me much more. The health, financial, career and many other losses and uncertainties I've experienced in a short time are profound. I've spent twenty-five years as a nurse caring for patients. I'd always assumed my retirement from patient care would come naturally -- with age and deliberate planning. I never envisioned that it would be dictated by a single moment that was preventable and beyond my control.
The Health Care Worker Needlestick Prevention Act is designed to end stories such as Karen Daley's. It is modeled after a new state law in California. California was the first state in the nation to enact legislation to require the use of safe needle and needleless technology in the health care arena. The California law was endorsed by the health industry, health workers, labor unions. In fact, it was signed into law by then-Governor Pete Wilson at the urging of Kaiser and the California Health Care Association (the state hospital trade association). State legislatures across the country are currently considering similar legislation. However, this is a national crisis and it deserves a national solution.
The Health Care Worker Needlestick Prevention Act would amend OSHA to require that safe needle technology be used in place of current unsafe needles. More specifically, it would amend OSHA's bloodborne pathogens standard to require that employers utilize needleless systems and sharps with engineering controls to prevent the spread of bloodborne pathogens. In order to carry out this requirement, employers would enlist direct care health care workers' participation in the identification and evaluation of the appropriate technology to use. It also provides for expanded documentation of needlestick injuries, and would establish a national clearinghouse within NIOSH to collect data and provide evaluation and training guidelines.
The bill is endorsed by numerous organizations including the American Nurses Association; the Service Employees International Union, Kaiser Permanente; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; Consumer Federation of America; Becton Dickinson, and the American Public Health Association.
If you would like to cosponsor our legislation, or have any questions, please
contact Debbie Curtis (Rep. Stark) at 5-5065 or Elizabeth Robbins (Rep. Roukema)
at 5-4465. A detailed summary of the bill is also available upon request.
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