San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, November 23, 1999
William Carlsen, Chronicle Staff Writer

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.
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