FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 31, 2006
Unions say it's time
for safety-engineered "sharps" to be law
TORONTO, - Three unions
representing about 130,000 Ontario health care workers say
it's time for Ontario to catch up with the rest of Canada
and make the use of safety-engineered "sharps" mandatory in
the province's health-care facilities.
The Ontario Nurses'
Association (ONA), the Service Employees International Union
(SEIU) Canada, and the Ontario Public Service Employees
Union (OPSEU) are speaking out in support of NDP MPP Shelley
Martel's proposed bill that would make the use of safety
needles mandatory in all health-care workplaces where
workers are exposed to blood-borne pathogens. They say this
would prevent 33,000 injuries a year in Ontario and save
millions of dollars.
Research cited by the unions
shows:
- The annual cost of
testing and treating needlestick injuries in Ontario, in
health care alone, is $64-million;
- In jurisdictions where
the use of safety needles are mandated by law, 83 per
cent of sharps injuries are prevented;
- About $4 million would
be saved yearly in Ontario by eliminating unsafe medical
sharps.
"Registered nurses need to
know that the government is serious about protecting their
health by making the use of safety-engineered devices
mandatory," said ONA President Linda Haslam-Stroud, RN.
"Legislation is the only way to ensure hospitals and
health-care facilities provide the safest equipment
available to prevent workers from being exposed to serious
diseases, like hepatitis and HIV, through needlestick
injuries. From April 2005 until this month, one Toronto-area
hospital alone reported 64 staff injuries involving sharps.
That's far too many lives to be endangering when safer
equipment would prevent this from happening."
"Although we represent about
40,000 health care workers, many of our non-health-care
workers also come into contact with unsafe needles," said
Leah Casselman, President of OPSEU. "These include OPSEU
members working in public laboratories, waste management,
the education sector, social services, jails and
correctional facilities, and the gaming industry, just to
name a few. That's why this law is so important to OPSEU."
Sharleen Stewart, SEIU's
International Canadian Vice-President, noted that "since
this bill was introduced last year, Ontario has slipped into
the bottom half of Canadian provinces without safety needle
protection for its health care workers. Ontario must follow
the example of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova
Scotia, or Ontario workers will suffer another 33,000 sharps
injuries in 2007."
Martel's bill, first
introduced in the legislature in March, 2005 and now known
as Bill 30, Safe Needles Save Lives, will receive Second
Reading in mid-November. The unions are anxious for the bill
to be passed into law.
-30-
For further information:
David Cox, OPSEU, (416)
443-8888
BACKGROUNDER
Health care workers launch new phase of campaign for
safer needles
OPSEU President Leah Casselman attends a news conference
with SEIU’s Sharlene Stewart, ONA’s Linda Haslam-Stroud and
MPP Shelley Martel, urging the Liberal government to pass
Martel’s proposed safe sharps legislation into law
