PHA-Exchange> Health-Asia-injections: WHO experts blast India, others in South Asia for unsterilised injections

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Health-Asia-injections: WHO experts blast India, others in South Asia
for unsterilised injections

Agence France-Presse - November 6, 2003
http://www.aegis.org/news/afp/2003/AF031131.html

PARIS, Nov 6 (AFP) - World Health Organisation (WHO) experts say
threeinjections out of every four in India and other countries in South
Asia are made with unsterilised needles, exposing countless people to
the risk of hepatitis, HIV and other infections.

The seven countries in the WHO's Southeast Asian Region Group D --
Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar and Nepal, as well as
North Korea -- are at the absolute bottom of a league for injection
safety among developing countries, they say.

Seventy-five percent of injections in the Group D countries were made
with needles that had already been used to inject other people and
which not been properly sterilised, according to the study, which
appears in next Saturday's British Medical Journal (BMJ).

In the other parts of Asia and the Western Pacific, unsafe needle
re-use was 30 percent; in the two regions of Africa, it was 17 and 19
percent; in the Middle East, it was 70 percent; and in Eastern Europe,
the rate was 11 percent.

Latin America was not included in the study for lack of data. "Overuse
of injections and unsafe practices are still common in developing and
transitional countries," according to the authors.

This combination "results in a major route of transmission for
hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus. Other complications of unsafe
injections include infection with HIV, abscesses, septicaemia, malaria
and viral haemorrhagic fevers."

Lead author is Yvan Hutin, a medical officer at the WHO's Department of
Blood Safety and Clinical Technology.