Hepatitis B vaccination status and Needle-stick and Sharps-related Injuries among medical school students in Nepal: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundHepatitis B is a dreadful infectious disease and a major global health problem. Health-care workers including clinical students are more vulnerable to such infections and non-sterile occupational exposures as their daily activities are closely related to patient’s blood and body fluids.MethodsA descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at B.P. Koirala Institute of Health Sciences (BPKIHS), Dharan, Nepal from July till October 2012. All medical, dental and nursing students were surveyed for their Hepatitis B vaccination status and only those students in clinical rotations were surveyed for the prevalence and pattern of Needle-stick and Sharps-related Injuries (NSSIs) using a pre-tested, semi-structured, self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyze the data.ResultsMajority (86.5%) of students were vaccinated against Hepatitis B of which 83.7% had completed full doses. Among non-vaccinated students, 43.2% reported the main reason for non-vaccination as lack of vaccination programs. Out of 210 respondents from clinical rotations, 90 students (42.8%) reported at least one injury. Among those injured, two students reported exposure to Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) positive cases and four to Hepatitis B virus (HBV) positive cases. Most of the injuries (44%) occurred during Internal Medicine rotation and the most common sharp involved (56.3%) was Hypodermic needle. Most injuries (35.6%) occurred while manipulating needle into patients. Following exposure, only 11.4% took Post exposure prophylaxis and 19.54% went for a Post-exposure serology test.ConclusionsNeedle-stick and Sharps-related Injuries occur frequently among health care workers including trainee students keeping them at high risk for acquiring dreadful infections like HBV, HCV and HIV. They need to be protected from unwarranted hazards by adopting routine Hepatitis B vaccination programs and by reinforcing education regarding universal precautions.

A cross sectional study on needle stick and sharp injuries among health care providers in tertiary centers, Tamil Nadu

“…Majority of them sustained injury while performing the procedure 134 (40%), commonest place of injury was operation theaters 149 (44.5%) and whereas in other studies, the most common place of occurrence of NSSIs was ward and in study done by Bhattarai et al most of injuries were (35.6%) occurred while manipulating needle into patients. 12,14,15 Commonest item responsible for the injury was hypodermic needle 141 (42.1%) which was similar to the other studies. 8,12,13,15 Fingers were most commonly affected 332 (99.1%), followed by hand 3 (0.9%) whereas in a study done by showed hands were the most affected body parts.…”

Knowledge and Practice of Health Care Workers regarding Needle Stick Injuries in a Tertiary Care Center of Nepal

“…Factors such as type and design of needle, recapping activity and method, handling or transferring specimens or sutures, cleaning activities, manipulation of needles or sutures, passing/handling devices or failure to dispose used needle in puncture proof containers have been implicated in the causation of NSI. [1][2][3][4][5] The global estimate of such accidental exposures is nearly 3.5 million individuals. 6 In our study, a very high prevalence of NSI was found (70.3%).…”

“…2 Various studies have shown a high prevalence of such injuries in Nepal. 3,4 Further, the practice of reporting of NSI has not been well established in Nepal. Studies have shown increased prevalence of NSI among nurses besides other HCWs and injuries occur when the duties are tiresome (3 or more night duties per week or more than 36 hours duty per week).…”

Seroprevalence of hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and human immunodeficiency virus in the western region of Nepal

“…Hence, the increasing global prevalence of HBV, HCV and HIV can affect the prevalence in Nepal as well. There are variable data about their study in different populations in Nepal, [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] but there is a lacking of their recent, complete and valid data in Nepal; hence, we aimed to study the seroprevalence of HBV, HCV and HIV in the western region of Nepal.…”