Magnitude and Impact of Occupational Related Needle Stick and Sharp Injuries and Associated Factors among Health Care Workers in Dire Dawa, Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: In African countries including Ethiopia occupational exposure of needle stick and sharp injuries is higher than elsewhere and it is still a major public health problem. It accounts for 86% of all occupationally related infection transmissions; expose Health Professionals to more than 20 blood borne pathogens. In Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, the magnitude of needle stick and sharp injuries and its health impacts remain unknown. In addition, available statistics underestimate the severity of the problem because most health care workers do not report their injuries. Objective: To determine the prevalence and associated factors of needle stick and sharp injuries among health care workers of public health facilities, Dire Dawa. Methods: A facility based cross sectional study was conducted using quantitative methods on a samples of 305 health care workers from five selected health facilities of Dire Dawa. Results: Both the life time and the last 12 months prevalence of NSSI were 149(53.8%) and 75(26.6%), respectively. The prevalence of NSSIs among clinical nurses, laboratory technologist and midwifery was 57%, 46% and 20%, respectively. Among the 75 cases occurred in the last one year, 49(65.3%) did not report the incident due to absence of reporting protocol (53.1%), fear of isolation and/or discrimination (20.4%), too busy to report (16.3%) and that it was not important to report the incident (10.2%). Although 80% HCWs took HBV vaccine, only 45% completed the full dose. Both before (crude analysis) and after the results were adjusted for selected variables, profession of medical laboratory (p=0.037), sometimes use of personal protective equipment (p=0.001), sometimes recapping needles after use (p=0.001), inadequate availability of post exposure prophylaxis (p=0.011), and working more than 40 H a week (p=0.009)} were factors significantly associated with occupational exposure NSSI. Conclusion: This study revealed high prevalence of NSSIs in the study area. This suggests distribution of adequate safety materials and prophylaxis is mandatory. Exposure prevention among the HCWs must be all health facilities concern and completion of three doses of Hepatitis B must be reiterated. More importantly distribution of syringe and needles which sheath or retract after use, and replace the older one, can be cost effective intervention strategy.

Prevalence of needlestick injury among healthcare workers in Ethiopia: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The earliest study was conducted during 2009 [55], and the latest two articles were published in 2019 [58, 59]. Overall information regarding the prevalence of NSIs was obtained from five regions and two self-administrative cities including Amhara [41, 44, 47, 49, 51, 53, 57–59]; Oromia [42, 48, 56]; Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People (SNNP) [37, 46, 50]; Somali [38]; and Harari [43]; two studies were conducted on both Somali and Dre Dawa (SAC) [52, 55], and four articles were obtained from two self-administrative cities Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa [39, 40, 45, 54]. The sample size across the studies was ranged from 162 [37] to 760 [46].…”

“…Similarly, seven studies exclusively reported the lifetime prevalence of the NSI [37, 39, 40, 47, 54, 57, 58]. The remaining five articles have reported both the 12-month and lifetime needlestick injury prevalence [43, 45, 46, 48, 49, 59]. The quality of each of the included studies was evaluated using a nine-item risk of bias assessment tool [36].…”

<p>Factors Associated with Needle Stick and Sharp Injuries Among Healthcare Workers in North East Ethiopia</p>

“…This finding is consistent with studies conducted in Ethiopia, Egypt, Tanzania and Tehran. [24][25][26][27][28] The possible reason might be less experienced workers are in a stressful situation in the workplace, they are less likely to get training, they did not know how to process and handle used sharp instruments, and even they might not be much concerned about the consequence of injury compared to experienced workers.…”

Full-dose hepatitis B virus vaccination coverage and associated factors among health care workers in Ethiopia: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…All the included studies were cross-sectional studies and the sample size ranged from 232 [ 26 ] to 1125 [ 27 ]. Regarding the regional distribution of the included studies, 4 were conducted in the Oromia region [ 26 , 28 – 30 ], 3 in the Amhara region [ 22 , 27 , 31 ], 5 in Addis Ababa [ 33 – 37 ], 2 in the Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region (SNNPR) [ 38 , 39 ], and 1 study in Diredawa [ 40 ]. Among the included studies, the prevalence of full-dose hepatitis B vaccination coverage among health care workers ranged from 1.3 [ 26 ] to 62.7 [ 38 ] ( Table 1 )…”