According to Guo Yanhong, a division chief with the Ministry of
Health, the government has developed a number of policies and broad
statutes over the past few years designed to prevent infections and
injuries from unsafe injections. More detailed regulations will be
announced soon.
As an increasing number of blood-borne diseases, such as
hepatitis B and C and HIV/AIDS, are being spread throughout the
world due to the sharing of needles, unsafe injections have become
a hot global public health topic.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10 percent of
the world’s 12 billion injections each year expanded-program
immunization (EPI) injections.
The remainder are medical injections. The WHO estimates that 30
percent of EPI injections and at least 50 percent of medical
injections are unsafe.
The situation is even worse in developing countries.
Children receive 5.5 billion injections annually and are the
first to be affected by unsafe practices.
Unsafe injection practices include the reusing syringes, poor
sterilization techniques and inadequate disposal of medical
waste.
“It is the responsibility of all health workers, their
employers, national governments and the public to ensure the safe
and appropriate use of injections,” said Kong Wen, of the China
Office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
To achieve this goal, the China Alliance for Safe Injections was
established two years ago.
In 1999, the WHO founded the Safe Injection Global Network at
its headquarters in Geneva. One of the organization’s main
objectives is to promote new technologies that minimize the risks
associated with injections.
The WHO and UNICEF were pushing for auto-disposal syringes,
which can only be used once, to be used for all EPI injections by
the end of last year, but there is still a long way to go before
the AD syringes are used for both EPI and medical injections.
(China Daily April 21, 2004)