Copyright 1999 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
The
Plain Dealer
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October 21, 1999 Thursday, FINAL / WEST
SECTION: METRO; Pg. 5B
LENGTH: 278 words
HEADLINE:
SENATOR PROMOTES NEEDLE SAFETY BILL
BYLINE: By THOMAS
SUDDES; PLAIN DEALER BUREAU
DATELINE: COLUMBUS
BODY:
Saying it's an opportunity to save lives and
money, Sen. Dan Brady yesterday called for approval of his "safe-needle" bill
for health-care workers.
At issue are injuries an estimated 40,000 Ohio
health-care workers annually suffer from "needlesticks" -
injuries from needles and other medical "sharps" - that can produce deadly
infections such as hepatitis and HIV. "Health care workers are vulnerable to
needlesticks every time they draw blood, hook up an IV, give a patient a shot,
take out refuse or change linen," Brady told the Senate Health, Human Services
and Aging Committee.
The committee's chairman, Sen. Grace Drake, a Solon
Republican, is a co-sponsor of the bill.
Brady, a Cleveland Democrat,
said his bill would require the state and other public employers to create
workplace committees to evaluate products such as safety needles that cut risks
for health-care workers.
Brady's bill would also require public
employers to make available, as part of their anti-infection protections,
non-needle injection systems, or needles redesigned to protect nurses,
physicians and technicians.
(One example: Syringes engineered so that
once an injection or a blood sample is complete, the syringe's needle retracts.)
Brady said that while such employers as Ohio State University Medical
Center and the state Rehabilitation and Correction Department - Ohio's prison
agency - have anti-needlestick policies, his bill would promote uniform
safe-needle standards in other workplaces as well.
Brady said that while
so-called "safe needles" cost, on average, 25 cents more than conventional
health-care needles, they are, in his view, cost effective.
LOAD-DATE: October 22, 1999 
