Copyright 1999 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San
Francisco Chronicle
NOVEMBER 23, 1999, TUESDAY, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 687 words
HEADLINE:
Agency Urges Switch to Safer Needles;
CDC says 600,000 injuries could be
avoided each year
BYLINE: William Carlsen, Chronicle
Staff Writer
BODY:
The federal Centers for Disease
Control called on the nation's hospitals and other health care facilities
yesterday to switch to safety needles, declaring that the move could reduce
potentially lethal needle injuries by up to 80 percent.
In a strongly
worded safety alert, the agency charged that accidental needle
sticks injure between 600,000 and 800,000 health care workers every
year.
"Too many people see needle-stick injuries as a
routine part of doing business," said Dr. Linda Rosenstock, director of the
CDC's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. "We want to change
that view." The CDC alert comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Occupational
Safety and Health Administration ordered its inspectors to begin citing
hospitals that have not started the switch to safe needles.
The federal
actions follow legislation in California and other states mandating the use of
safe needles to protect nurses, doctors, lab technicians and other medical
workers from needle sticks.
In a special report last year, The Chronicle
reported that tens of thousands of health care workers have contracted HIV,
hepatitis and other lethal diseases from needle injuries in recent years.
The Chronicle reported that syringes with safety features such as
retractable or self-blunting needles have been available for years but that
hospitals have balked at using them because they cost more.
PROBLEM
CAN'T BE IGNORED
But yesterday, the CDC acknowledged that the problem
was too widespread and its consequences too serious to ignore.
"For
every 100 beds a hospital has, on average it has 30 needle-stick injuries per
year," said Rosenstock. "The public attention and awareness of this problem has
lagged behind the scope of it."
Rosenstock said concern over the added
cost of safety needles was "shortsighted" because the high cost of testing and
treating injured workers far outstrips safe needles' marginally higher price.
She pointed out that those treatment costs do not include the enormous
emotional toll that health care workers endure while awaiting test results, some
of which can take months.
Earlier this month, OSHA issued a directive to
its inspectors, authorizing them to impose sanctions on medical facilities that
do not use safe needle devices.
"We must do everything we can to protect
workers who may be at risk of exposure to blood-borne diseases," Labor Secretary
Alexis Herman said in a statement accompanying the order.
On July 1,
California became the first state to require health care facilities to provide
workers with safety needles. The bill was introduced by Assemblywoman Carole
Migden following The Chronicle's "Deadly Needles" series and was signed into law
by former Gov. Pete Wilson.
LEGISLATION PENDING
Since
California's landmark safety-needle law was passed, Maryland and Tennessee have
passed similar legislation, and more than 20 states are considering laws based
on California's.
Federal safety-needle legislation is also pending,
supported by Rep. Pete Stark, D-Fremont, and Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
Bill Borwegen, the health and safety director for the nation's largest
health care workers' union, the Service Employees International Union, said
yesterday that the CDC safety alert is long overdue.
"This has been a
national tragedy," he said. "Finally, this safety alert sheds light on the ugly
little secret that hospitals have been sweeping under the rug too long.
"Why is it that hospital executives can have nice retractable pens to
protect their $600 suits when hospital workers can't get a
simple retractable safety needle to save their lives?"
The American
Hospital Association, which recently backed OSHA's effort to require hospitals
to switch to safe needles, was not available for comment.
-------------------------------------------------------
Needle
sticks to health care workers can be reduced dramatically by using needles with
safety features. Those safety features include retractable needles that spring
back into the syringe barrel, and a plastic sheath that can slide down and cover
the needle.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, GRAPHIC,
PHOTO: Diane Sosne, president of the Service Employees International Union, the
nation's largest health care workers' union, displayed a safety-needle device in
Olympia, Wash. / Associated Press., GRAPHIC: SAFETY FEATURES / Steve
Kearsley/The Chronicle
LOAD-DATE: November 23, 1999
