NEW DELHI: The National Medical Commission (NMC) has directed all medical colleges and institutions to mandatorily implement safe injection practices to prevent transmission of blood-borne infections, including HIV, Hepatitis B (HBV), and Hepatitis C virus.
Stressing "zero tolerance" for any practice, which causes serious breaches of patient safety, the NMC said, "Strict adherence to safe injection practices is a non-negotiable patient safety mandate."
In an advisory, NMC Secretary, Dr. Raghav Langer, cited data and evidence from international and national settings that depict unsafe injection practice may result in outbreaks of HIV and other blood-borne infections.
"Such events are entirely preventable through strict adherence to standard infection prevention and control practices," the advisory said.
“In view of the above, all the Medical Colleges are hereby advised to ensure full compliance to prevent the avoidable transmission of blood borne infections and adhere strictly and comply to the National Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control,” the advisory added.
Dr Langer said measures such as hand hygiene, implementation of mandatory safe injection practices using only sterile, single-use needles and syringes with strict prohibition of reuse under all circumstances need to be enforced across all facilities.
“All sharps and injection-related waste need to be segregated and disposed of as per Biomedical Waste Management Rules, 2016,” the advisory said.
It also said that all medical colleges may “progressively adopt safety-engineered auto-disable syringes."
“The training to healthcare workers with competency assessments should be provided periodically. Any needle-stick injury/cluster of infections should be reported for investigation,” it added.
Further, hospital authorities were directed that they must ensure post-exposure prophylaxis as per National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) guidelines and conduct regular audits by in-charges and infection control teams.
"Any practice which can cause serious breaches of patient safety such as reuse, vial sharing without precautions, recapping, and improper sharps disposal must have zero tolerance,” the advisory added.
According to the WHO, millions of people could be protected from infections acquired through unsafe injections if all healthcare programmes switched to syringes that cannot be used more than once. As per WHO 2010 estimates, up to 1.7 million people were infected with hepatitis B virus, up to 3,15,000 with hepatitis C virus and as many as 33,800 with HIV through an unsafe injection.
A national study in 2012, which the WHO quoted in its 'India Injection Safety Implementation Project (2016-18),' found that an estimated three billion injections were administered annually in India and out of these 1.89 billion were unsafe.
