Abstract:
Globally, hundreds thousands to millions of health care professionals are exposed to serious and fatal disease causing microorganisms due to their exposure to needle stick, and blood/body fluid splashes each year. Exposures to needle stick blood/body fluid splashes are one of the challenging issues in Ethiopia with a one-year and lifetime prevalence of 55.1% and 63.6% respectively among health care workers of Ethiopia.
Objective:To assess the magnitude of occupational exposure to needle stick injury and blood/body fluid splash and its determinants among health care professionals of public health centers of Arada sub city, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2023.
Methods: Institutional based cross sectional study was conducted from Nov. 1 to Nov.30, 2022 among 438 health care professionals selected by simple random sampling in public health centers of Arada sub city. Self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect the data, entered via EpInfo version 7 and exported to SPSS version 22 for analysis. The result of the study was presented by frequencies, tables, graphs and significant predictors was reported with odds ratio, 95% confidence interval and corresponding p.value (<0.05).
Result: From a total of 435 participants, 222(51.0) and 131 (30.1%)wereexposed to blood/body fluids and needle stick injuries in their life time respectively. Lack of training on infection prevention (AOR, 2.40 95% CI(1.18-4.89) inavailability of PPEs throughout the year (AOR 2.64 95%CI(1.19-5.87)) and having job related stress (AOR3.58 95%CI(1.63-7.85)) were significant preddictors that increase of exposure to blood/body fluids.
Conclusion and recommendation: The life time prevalence of exposure to blood/body fluids and neddle stick injuriess in this study was relatively high. providing training on infection prevention, availing personal protective equipment throughout the year and preventing/treating job related stress might decrease exposure to blood/body fluids.
Key words: occupational exposure, blood and body fluid splash, needle stick injury...................Thesis available at Addis Continental Institute of Public Health Library