Canada: Personal-care worker struggles after contracting hepatitis C from client

The journey from the good life to bad started in the summer of 2011. Then, nearly 20 years into a career as a personal-care worker, Rowe took a client into her home for weekend care.

The non-communicative client cut herself in the bathroom and while a visiting nurse friend stemmed the bleeding, Rowe began to clean up.

“It’s summer, I’m in flip-flops and I’ve got cracked feet. I’ve got my gloves on, but they aren’t going to do anything for me.”

The client had hepatitis C and an unknowing Rowe contracted the disease.

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Splashes & Sharps: Occupational Exposures in the Health Care Setting

Many risky, splash-creating activities are conducted without the proper PPE because there is a lower perceived risk.

 When it comes to health care occupational risks, slips, trips, and falls are often the first to come to mind. Sharps also make the top of the list, but what is often overlooked is the cousin to sharps: splashes. Also known as mucocutaneous blood exposures, splashes are a notable risk for health care workers. Splashes—from routine activities such as cutting catheter bags, cleaning bedpans, and emptying suction cups—can land on a caregiver, where it can transfer a pathogen through the eyes, nose, or mouth.

Every year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that nearly 385,000 health care works in hospitals suffer sharps-related injuries. ¹ By comparison, a study led by Doebbeling, et al. at the Veterans Administration found that in the previous three months, roughly 38 percent of all RNs had experienced a splash. Making the risk even more serious, they found that more than a quarter of these splashes went unreported. ²

Splashes, like sharps, can present serious risks to health care employees. This is because they can cause occupational-related infections, ranging from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to hepatitis B virus (HBV) to hepatitis C virus (HCV).^3. Occupational exposures such as splashes can lead to lost work days, financial burden, and physical impairment. They also can take an emotional toll on those exposed.

*PPE = Personal protective equipment

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Australia: Prisons breeding ground for Hep C

Australian jails are a potential breeding ground for Hepatitis C, a former prison officer has told a Senate inquiry.

Ross Hannah says Australia could be gearing up for a tidal wave of liver transplants if more effort isn't put into preventing illicit drugs and syringes entering jails.

Mr Hannah said needle stick injuries were a growing threat to prison guards during cell searches.

Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/03/20/10/24/prisons-breeding-ground-for-hep-c-guard#JPfueRARkZuckYLt.99

UK: Risk of blood-borne viruses from sharps injuries continues, report claims

Healthcare workers continue to be at risk of exposure to blood-borne viruses through occupational sharps injuries, with reported cases increasing, Public Health England (PHE) has warned in a damning report.

This is despite awareness of the risk of sharps injuries, safe practices being much more widespread, and the fact safety-engineered devices to prevent such injuries are now widely available, it has added.

In its latest report on exposures to a blood-borne virus (BBV), PHE said cases reported had increased among healthcare workers from 373 in 2004 to 496 in 2013.

The updated Eye of the Needle report, which was first published in 2012, found that, over this 10-year period, approximately 30% of exposures involved a source patient infected with HIV; 54% involved hepatitis C (HCV) and 9% hepatitis B (HBV).

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