Getting Past the Sticking Point
By James August
The national statistics are startling: An average of 35 health care workers contract HIV through needlesticks each year. As many as 1,000 become infected with other serious diseases.
On Nov. 6, President Clinton signed into law the Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act of 2000, only 10 days after the Senate passed it. The new measure goes into effect in July 2001 and amends the Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (BBP) issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1991. The act includes safeguards against serious illnesses to protect thousands of AFSCME members who work in health care.
WHAT WE DID. AFSCME petitioned for a standard to protect workers from bloodborne diseases way back in 1986, because of increased exposure to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B. OSHA issued the BBP five years later. It included a provision calling for employers to vaccinate at-risk workers for hepatitis B. But the measure didn’t go far enough to prevent illness from needlesticks.
Concerned AFSCME members have written letters and made phone calls to congressional leaders, as well as traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby on the inherent dangers of working with unsafe needles. In addition, almost 20 states have passed laws dealing with needle safety or requiring studies of the problem. (AFSCME and other unions combined to get the first state law passed in California in 1998.)
The law strengthens OSHA’s authority to require employers to use safer needles and other devices. It also requires that employers consult frontline health care workers on the devices to be used and that they establish a log that keeps track of “sharps” injuries.
Registered nurse Michele Currivan, a member of the Connecticut Health Care Associates/AFSCME Local 1199, says the legislation is warranted because “people are still at high risk and getting stuck. With our union, we’ve got some force behind us on these issues.”
SAVING LIVES AND MONEY. Although needles with built-in safety features cost a bit more than conventional ones, they save money in the long run. That’s because preventing needlesticks avoids expensive testing, drugs, treatment, counseling and other injury-related costs. The Food and Drug Administration has approved some 250 safety needles and devices, so health care managers have plenty of good equipment to choose from.
State and local government workers in about half the states are not covered by OSHA laws and therefore fall outside these new protections. AFSCME is continuing to work to apply the protections to public hospitals and similar institutions in those non-covered states.
