There are currently no specific, published data quantifying the need for safe injection equipment or the amount of infectious sharps waste produced by testing and treatment programs for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. With growing funding in these areas there is an increased need to ensure all programs are integrating safe injection approaches and equipment in order t...

Nurses face the risk of exposure to blood-borne infections if they suffer a needlestick or other injury from sharp devices such as lancets, scalpels and razors. In order to minimise their risk of contracting viruses such as HIV, hepatitis B and C, or other infections, risk assessment exercises must be undertaken so that safer systems of work can be implemented to protect nurses and other health...

There is a high risk of staff receiving needlestick and other sharps injuries while working in health care. Concern is so great that a seminar on sharps injury prevention and single-use medical devices was held in March 2003 at the European Parliament in Brussels. Injuries caused by needles and other sharp medical devices, and the related risk of potentially fatal disease transmission, remain a...

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) revised the Bloodborne Pathogen Standard and, on July 17, 2001, began enforcing the use of appropriate and effective sharps devices with engineered sharps injury protection. OSHA requires employers to maintain a sharps injury log that records, among other items, the type and brand of contaminated sharps device involved in each injury. Fed...

lieve, on the basis of our studies and those of others, that self-disinfecting surfaces such as copper are an important additional tool and a significant step forward in helping to reduce the potentially infection-causing microbial bioloads that exist on clinical surfaces. Indeed, we should ask the question, why select a nonantimicrobial surface when we now know that naturally occurring metals ...