Stung by the high risk and incidence of contracting infections and fatal diseases like Hepatitis and HIV by the health workers who attend the patients in India, a welcome move has been initiated by the stakeholders, specially the industry and the hospital managements, to cobble up a 'partners in safety' forum to care those caring the patients.

In the wake of reports of alarming proportions of the risks involved and in the face of gross neglect of the factor, a cross-section of leading experts, corporate hospital managements, health workers and the industry representatives have decided to work towards framing up guidelines and launching awareness campaigns in the run up to floating a 'collaborative and co-habitative' forum.

The concept, initiated with a panel discussion organized here recently by leading global medical technology company Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), would be pursued further through interactions with all stakeholders including the government, clinicians, nurses, hospital infection control societies, hospital managements, NGOs and insurance companies.

"There is a gross neglect to note the issue. The need of the hour is to chalk out a multi-pronged strategy to tackle it. House-keeping staff of the hospitals are more vulnerable to the infections," observed Dr P N Kakkar, chairman of Infection Control Committee of Max Healthcare, and narrated the successful experiment in his institution.

"There is a need for setting standards to begin with and it is important to ensure safety environment. Industry and all other stakeholders should come together to define the safety first,'' said Dr Kashagra Katarya, CEO of Artemis.

It is pointed out that over a million needlestick injuries alone take place across the world in a year. The injuries can lead to hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV) and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Each year, sharps injuries are responsible for over 65,00 new HBV infections, 16,000 new HCV infections and 1,000 new HIV infections, some studies said.

The panelists also cited that most of the cases were not reported due to several reasons from lack of awareness to the fear of losing the job. And most of the hospitals even do not care to maintain a register for the injuries to the health workers.

The aspect of safety was not being included in the curriculum of the nurses or other professionals and there was lack of training and manpower in the sector, thus increasing the chances of infections higher, pointed out critical care specialist Dr Rajesh Pandey. Usha Banerjee, director, Nursing, at the Appollo Hospitals, felt that there was also callous attitude among the staff and lack of awareness makes things worse.

The experts also called for strict measures to enter the injuries into register in all the hospitals, specially in the public sector and mount surveillance programmes to follow it up. Healthcare consultant Dr Y P Bhatia wanted the government to launch campaigns like polio drives to ensure safety aspects of the health workers.

BD offered to hold more awareness programmes in hospitals to push the idea further. Steps like summits, campaigns, launching of websites, roundtables and institution of safety awards were also being mooted in the run up to floating the forum. The industry was urged to come out with more innovative products as prevention was found to be cheaper than treating the diseases contracted through infections.