TORONTO: The announcement of mandatory respirators
and safe sharps in hospitals today is a major health
and safety win for health care workers who have
campaigned hard on these issues, representatives for
the Ontario Public Service Employees Union said
today.
The government said it is
providing 55-million N95 respirators and mandating
the use of safety engineered needles or needle-less
systems to protect health care workers in Ontario
hospitals.
"This is a huge victory for
OPSEU and its allies," said the union's president,
Warren (Smokey) Thomas. "It shows that our strong
campaigning on this issue has paid off."
OPSEU, along with the
Service Employees International Union, the Ontario
Nurses’ Association, Shelley Martel, MPP and other
allies, have been campaigning for several years
against the government for the introduction of
safety-engineered needles and sharps.
Also, since the recent SARS
pandemic, OPSEU and allies have pushed for
government regulation to protect health care workers
against infectious disease.
A new regulation under the
Occupational Health and Safety Act will make safety
engineered needles or needle-less systems mandatory
in all hospitals as of Sept. 1, 2008. The government
says it will consult to develop amendments to the
new regulation for safe sharps to include long-term
care homes, psychiatric facilities, laboratories and
specimen collection centres in 2009 and in other
health care workplaces (home care, doctor's offices,
ambulances, etc.) in 2010.
"We do wonder why long term
care, psychiatric facilities and lab collections
centres are supposed to wait until 2009 and
ambulance workers until 2010. These workers too
should be protected immediately," said Patty Rout,
First Vice-President/Treasurer of the union. "You
can't predict when sharps injuries are going to
happen. We strongly object to the phasing in of
these urgent protections."
In his final report on SARS,
Justice Campbell focused on the need to protect the
safety of the province's front line health care
workers. As a result, the province has adopted the
"precautionary principle" when faced with infectious
disease outbreaks, in providing personal protective
equipment. OPSEU and its allies specifically asked
Justice Campbell for this.
"This is a step in the
right direction by this government, we only wonder
why they waited until the eve of an election to do
it," Rout said.
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