Union: CDC overlooked safer needle devices
January 1, 1998
Union: CDC overlooked safer needle devices
SEIU criticizes guidelines for major deficiency’
Draft guidelines for infection control in health care personnel released recently by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fail to mention the availability or use of safer needle devices to prevent many of the 800,000 needlestick injuries estimated to occur each year among health care workers, according to leaders of the nation’s largest HCW union.
In a letter to top CDC officials, William Borwegen, MPH, health and safety director for the Washington, DC-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU), says "the failure . . . to recommend, let alone even mention," safer needle devices is a "major deficiency" of the document.
The CDC draft guidelines issued last September cover a wide range of infection control issues including exposure protection for HCWs from bloodborne pathogens such as human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C (see Hospital Employee Health, December 1997, pp. 133-138), which can be transmitted through needlestick injuries.
"However, nowhere does the document mention that the leading way to prevent needlesticks is through the use of widely available and widely marketed safer needle technologies," Borwegen states.
He points out what the SEIU considers three main omissions in the draft guidelines relating to safer needle device technology:
• no mention of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration 1992 safety alert on preventing needlesticks by eliminating sharps when making intravenous connections;
• no mention of a requirement in the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s bloodborne pathogens standard for health care facilities to regularly evaluate safer devices designed to prevent needlesticks;
• no mention of the CDC’s own two reports early last year stating that safer needle devices significantly reduced needlesticks among HCWs.1,2
Calling upon the CDC to "assume the main leadership role" in encouraging health care facilities to purchase and supply new needle technology, Borwegen says the final guidelines, due out next spring, "must clearly tell people there are safer devices out there."
CDC epidemiologist Elizabeth Bolyard, RN, a lead author of the draft document, says it originally contained references to safer device technology for preventing needlestick injuries, but that information was "taken out due to space limitations." She does not recall whether those references included specific recommendations for the use of safer devices. CDC officials continue to revise the draft based upon comments received, she adds, so it is possible that the final version will once again contain those references.