injection-safety_brochure

All of us, at some point in our lives, have had orwill have an injection to retain or restore goodhealth.But sometimes injections that are intended topromote health do the opposite. This happenswhen they are given in an unsafe way - using thesame needle or syringe to give injections to morethan one person. Practices like this can lead tothe transmission of life-threatening infections. Forthese reasons, the World Health Organization(WHO) is launching a new policy on injectionsafety to help countries tackle the pervasive issueof unsafe injectionsA 2014 study found that in 2010 as many as 33800 people became infected with HIV, up to 1.7million were infected with hepatitis B virus andup to 315 000 with hepatitis C virus through anunsafe injection. Usually infections are transmittedfrom one patient to another, but health workersare also at risk of becoming infected throughneedle injury.Towards Safe Injections For AllWHO and partners – including the Safe InjectionGlobal Network (SIGN) , UNICEF and Gavi, theVaccine Alliance – have been working activelytogether for more than a decade to promote safeinjection practices by educating policy makers onmaking sterile equipment available and educatinghealth workers on the critical importance of usingonly sterile material. The initial push focusedstrongly on spurring countries to use only autodisablesyringes for vaccinating children. Thiskind of syringe has an internal mechanism thatblocks the barrel after a single use so that thesyringe cannot be used again.Now the spotlight is on the risks associated withinjections into muscle (intramuscular) or skin(subcutaneous or intradermal) to treat medicalconditions; and how to make them safer througheducation on safe procedures, elimination ofunnecessary injections and better design ofequipment.The New Smart SyringesThe surest way to protect against unsafeinjections is to use devices for injections thathave been engineered so they cannot be re-usedand don’t lead to accidental needle stick injuriesamong health workers.Re-use prevention features are essentially thesame as the auto-disable features designedfor immunization of a single child. The maindifference is that syringes designed for deliveringmedicines allow the health worker to adjustthe dose as needed and to move the plungertwice when it is necessary to mix two differentmedicines in one syringe or reconstitute vaccinesand medicines if necessary. Some modelsinclude a weak spot in the plunger that causesit to break if the user attempts to pull back onthe plunger after the injection. Others have ametal clip that blocks the plunger so it cannot bemoved back while in others the needle retractsinto the syringe barrel at the end of the injectionSyringes are also being engineered with featuresto protect health workers from “needle stick”injuries and resulting infections. A sheath orhood slides over the needle after the injection iscompleted to protect the user from being injuredaccidentally by the needle. These syringes alsogenerally have a re-use prevention feature.