Healthcare workers from several hospitals have called for legislation to mandate the use of safety needles to reduce the incidence of accidental needle prick injuries.
The reported number of injuries from accidental needle pricks in Taiwan is 8,000 per year, healthcare workers and professionals said, urging the government to address this occupational hazard.
At present, the use of safety needles is subsidized by the Bureau of National Health Insurance only under special circumstances and in emergency rooms. Safety needles are usually not used in hospitals for general medical procedures.
The Taiwan AIDS Foundation, which organized the awareness campaign, said there were more than 30 kinds of blood-borne diseases, including hepatitis B, HIV and syphilis, which could be transmitted through needle prick injuries in non-emergency settings.
However, even though the use of safety needle sets can effectively prevent healthcare professionals from acquiring blood-transmitted diseases, these needles are not often used in Taiwan, the foundation said.
“If we look at the statistics for January to November 2010, the use of safety needle sets was only 2.07 percent of the total,” foundation secretary-general Hung Lin Chiung-chao (洪林瓊照) said.
Asked why the government and hospitals have been reluctant to fully adopt the use of safety needles, Hung said he suspected cost was the major reason.
The costs of a normal needle set is about NT$2 as compared with NT$27 or more for a safety set, he said.
However, the cost of tests and treatment for people with needle prick injuries would probably exceed that of buying safety needles, he said, adding that the government should spend money on prevention rather than cure.
The foundation said that although medical professionals are working closely with several legislators to push for laws on the use of safety needles throughout the healthcare system, the allocation of funds to cover the cost is likely to be a big impediment.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS