Doctors across the country have begun a mass movement on injection safety in a bid to save thousands of lives lost every year to unsafe management of the pricking needle.
With the risk of serious diseases like hepatitis B and C as well as AIDS growing by the day, medicos have identified
injuries and infection from used needles as one of the prime reasons behind the menace.
"Each year, 16,000 million injections are administered in developing and transitional countries with India accounting for 4.2 billion. The concern, therefore, is for occupational risk to health workers, patients and indirect risk via the environment to the community," says Satish B Kaipilyawar, project coordinator of Hyderbad-based NGO PATH, which is pioneering the cause of safe injections in the country.
World Health Organisation estimates that unsafe injection resulted in about 1.6 lakh new HIV infections, 16 million Hepatitis B and about 4.7 million hepatitis C infections.
About two-thirds of injections given in India were estimated to be unsafe, according to an IndiaClen Program Evaluation Network report for the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.
Taking cognizance of the seriousness of the issue, the Indian Medical Association dedicated the latest volume of its journal to injection safety and has launched a national campaign on it.