THE Global Initiative for Safe Injection and Medical Waste Management, GIFSI, has raised alarm over the potential hazard of non-immunisation of all categories of Nigerian healthcare workers against hepatitis B & C, and called for establishment of a Presidential Task Force on Injection Safety to curb the menace.
Issuing the alert in a chat with Good Health Weekly on this year’s World Hepatitis Day, Executive Secretary and National Coordinator GIFSI, Mr. Goddie Ereoforiokuma, warned that infected health workers, besides suffering the consequential impairment of acute Hepatitis B infection, are a source of risk to patients for whom they provide care.
“There is currently no provision for health care workers to be captured in any immunisation programme whether national or state. This is in clear contradiction of current paradigm of global best practices. World Health Assembly Resolution 60.20 (2007) urges member states to give special attention to occupational health and implement campaigns to immunise healthcare workers against Hepatitis B virus,” he argued.
Quoting baseline data from a 2004 national cross-sectional survey by the Federal Ministry of Health in conjunction with USAID, Ereoforiokuma, pointed out that nearly half of healthcare workers who are occupationally exposed have at least one needle sick injury a year, while nearly 90 percent of the nation’s healthcare workforce is not immunised against hepatitis B.
His words: “The WHO also recommends that all health care workers should receive three doses of Hepatitis B immunisation prior to starting work in health care settings and that students undergoing professional health programmes (nursing, medicine, dentistry, microbiology, etc.) should receive Hepatitis B vaccine prior to commencement of their clinical rotations and be monitored to ensure completion of the three doses.”
The World Health Organization, WHO, has established that an estimated 16 billion injections are given annually in developing nations with Nigeria having a high injection burden of about 750 million injections per annum; up to 50 percent declared unsafe being administered with re-used and/or unsterilised syringes and needles.
Hepatitis B is the most serious viral hepatitis for which Nigeria is endemic and has a prevalence of more than 8 percent: about 20 million Nigerians are currently estimated to be infected while an estimated 6.08 million persons are projected to have contracted the hepatitis virus over time through unsafe injection and poor healthcare waste management practices.
“It is instructive to note that 25 percent of adult chronic carriers of Hepatitis B are likely to die from consequences of chronic Hepatitis B. The implication is that over the next 25 – 30 years an estimated five million Nigerians who contracted chronic Hepatitis B in childhood are likely to die from liver cirrhosis or cancer of the liver as a result of the chronic infection.
Calling for establishment of a Presidential Task Force on Injection Safety, the GIFSI Scribe said it would raise the awareness of relevant cadres of Health care workers on injection safety in the context of infection prevention and control.
“The task Force will also be in a position to collaborate with relevant agencies and ministries, as well as integrate private sector healthcare providers as active participants in injection safety. Presently there is no effective coordination of efforts to ensure compliance with the provisions of the national policy on injection safety and Health care waste management. An Injection Safety Task Force will certainly assist in making this happen in a manner that can be sustained”.
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