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Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff

BACKGROUND: Health staff in Afghanistan may be at high risk of needle stick injury and occupational infection with blood borne pathogens, but we have not found any published or unpublished data. METHODS: Our aim was to measure the percentage of healthcare staff reporting sharps injuries in the prece...

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Autores principales: Salehi, Ahmad Shah, Garner, Paul
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2010
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835705/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20113517
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-10-19
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author Salehi, Ahmad Shah
Garner, Paul
author_facet Salehi, Ahmad Shah
Garner, Paul
author_sort Salehi, Ahmad Shah
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Health staff in Afghanistan may be at high risk of needle stick injury and occupational infection with blood borne pathogens, but we have not found any published or unpublished data. METHODS: Our aim was to measure the percentage of healthcare staff reporting sharps injuries in the preceding 12 months, and to explore what they knew about universal precautions. In five randomly selected government hospitals in Kabul a total of 950 staff participated in the study. Data were analyzed with Epi Info 3. RESULTS: Seventy three percent of staff (72.6%, 491/676) reported sharps injury in the preceding 12 months, with remarkably similar levels between hospitals and staff cadres in the 676 (71.1%) people responding. Most at risk were gynaecologist/obstetricians (96.1%) followed by surgeons (91.1%), nurses (80.2%), dentists (75.4%), midwives (62.0%), technicians (50.0%), and internist/paediatricians (47.5%). Of the injuries reported, the commonest were from hollow-bore needles (46.3%, n = 361/780), usually during recapping. Almost a quarter (27.9%) of respondents had not been vaccinated against hepatitis B. Basic knowledge about universal precautions were found insufficient across all hospitals and cadres. CONCLUSION: Occupational health policies for universal precautions need to be implemented in Afghani hospitals. Staff vaccination against hepatitis B is recommended.
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spelling pubmed-28357052010-03-10 Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff Salehi, Ahmad Shah Garner, Paul BMC Infect Dis Research Article BACKGROUND: Health staff in Afghanistan may be at high risk of needle stick injury and occupational infection with blood borne pathogens, but we have not found any published or unpublished data. METHODS: Our aim was to measure the percentage of healthcare staff reporting sharps injuries in the preceding 12 months, and to explore what they knew about universal precautions. In five randomly selected government hospitals in Kabul a total of 950 staff participated in the study. Data were analyzed with Epi Info 3. RESULTS: Seventy three percent of staff (72.6%, 491/676) reported sharps injury in the preceding 12 months, with remarkably similar levels between hospitals and staff cadres in the 676 (71.1%) people responding. Most at risk were gynaecologist/obstetricians (96.1%) followed by surgeons (91.1%), nurses (80.2%), dentists (75.4%), midwives (62.0%), technicians (50.0%), and internist/paediatricians (47.5%). Of the injuries reported, the commonest were from hollow-bore needles (46.3%, n = 361/780), usually during recapping. Almost a quarter (27.9%) of respondents had not been vaccinated against hepatitis B. Basic knowledge about universal precautions were found insufficient across all hospitals and cadres. CONCLUSION: Occupational health policies for universal precautions need to be implemented in Afghani hospitals. Staff vaccination against hepatitis B is recommended. BioMed Central 2010-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC2835705/ /pubmed/20113517 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-10-19 Text en Copyright ©2010 Salehi and Garner; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Salehi, Ahmad Shah
Garner, Paul
Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff
title Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff
title_full Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff
title_fullStr Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff
title_full_unstemmed Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff
title_short Occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in Kabul hospital staff
title_sort occupational injury history and universal precautions awareness: a survey in kabul hospital staff
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2835705/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20113517
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-10-19
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