TORONTO - Contracting a deadly disease from an accidental prick of a needle is a fear nurses live with each day at work, but the province appears unwilling to move on proposed legislation to address the issue even though similar laws have been passed in other provinces and the United States, the Ontario Nurses Association said Tuesday.
Around 70,000 health-care professionals across the country suffer needle injuries every year, then go through the ordeal of waiting to see if tests for a variety of diseases come back positive. About 33,000 needle injuries are reported annually in Ontario.
The government must pass proposed legislation to mandate the use of safety-engineered needles, which would dramatically reduce the risk of nurses contracting hepatitis C or HIV at work, said association president Linda Haslam-Stroud.
"We believe it's really a no-brainer. It had the support of all three parties ... so we want it put forward,'' she said.
"The lives of health-care workers in Ontario are at stake here, and we do not need to have this continued injury taking place in the health-care workplace when there is an easy answer.''
Similar legislation has already been passed in the United States, as well as Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. British Columbia has committed to mandating the use of safety needles.
A study suggests injuries dropped by 51 per cent in the U.S. within the first year of enacted legislation, even though it took some time for full compliance of the new rules to take effect. Injuries were down 80 per cent in facilities that had completely changed over to the safer needles.
But Haslam-Stroud said she doesn't think the Ontario government is getting the message and has no intention of following through with a private member's bill introduced by New Democrat Shelley Martel.
"The answer we're getting at this point from the government is .. 'we've done this and we've done that,' but there is no commitment at this point,'' she said.
Labour Minister Steve Peters said the government has spent $12 million on the safety-engineered needles but is waiting on a committee report before deciding what to do with the proposed legislation.
The government has said the costs to hospitals to implement the legislation would be prohibitively costly, but Patty Rout, vice-president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said it would actually save money.
Ontario spends about $32 million in testing and treatment for needlestick accidents within acute care facilities, while it would cost only $22 million to purchase the safety-engineered needles, Rout said.
It's still too early to assess how many injuries have been prevented in Canada -- since all the legislation is still relatively new -- but the health-care system has adapted, said Rosalee Longmoore, president of the Saskatchewan Union of Nurses.
"I think it has gone quite smoothly with employers, but I think it's too soon to be looking at (changes in) statistics,'' she said.
Conservative Bob Runciman said there's no doubt nurses deserve the extra protection the safety-engineered needles would provide and that the government should pass the legislation.
"They shouldn't allow this to drag on and fester. To me it's the sort of thing that could be and should be resolved rather quickly,'' he said.
