New equipment, including respirators, will greatly reduce risk of injury to health-care workers, Liberals say, but critics call measures political jockeying

STEVE RENNIE - Canadian Press
August 24, 2007 at 4:00 AM EDT

TORONTO - Ontario's health-care workers will have another line of defence against life-threatening diseases after the province announced yesterday it will provide nurses with new respirators and safety needles to guard against job-related injuries and infections.

Health Minister George Smitherman and Labour Minister Steve Peters made the announcement at North York General Hospital, where nurses were on the front lines during Toronto's SARS outbreak four years ago.

Mr. Smitherman praised the hospital as a "key player" during the crisis that prompted the World Health Organization to issue an advisory against unnecessary travel to the city.

"A very, very big obligation on my part has been to learn and to apply the lessons from SARS," he said. "This is one more piece of that puzzle. There are hundreds and hundreds of pieces, and we're working very diligently to put them together."

The government will purchase up to 55 million new N95 respirators, which provide better protection than standard surgical masks against diseases such as SARS and the flu.

A provincial inquiry into the SARS outbreak recommended the use of N95 respirators, and not surgical masks, for health-care workers during a flu pandemic.

Andrea Ennis, a clinical nurse educator in North York General Hospital's emergency department, said the new masks will give nurses greater peace of mind when treating patients.

"To be able to have N95 masks, which prepare us against everything, causes a lot of decrease in the angst many nurses may have, especially in the emergency department, where we don't know what's coming through the door," she said.

The province has also amended the Occupational Health and Safety Act to make safety-engineered needles or needle-less systems mandatory in all hospitals starting Sept. 1, 2008. The measure will be phased in at other health-care settings over the next three years.

The move comes after dozens of Ontario nurses rallied outside the legislature in May to demand action on stalled legislation mandating the use of safety needles.

The Ontario Nurses' Association says around 70,000 Canadian health-care professionals are accidentally pricked by needles each year, and about half of those injuries take place in Ontario.

The association says safety needles would dramatically reduce the risk of nurses contracting hepatitis C or HIV.

The Ontario Safety Association for Community and Healthcare also applauded the government's announcement.

"Health-care workplaces in Ontario will be much safer when these new measures are fully implemented," association president Joseline Sikorski said in a release.

But opposition critics and the union representing registered nurse practitioners and other front-line workers derided yesterday's announcement as political jockeying in the lead-up to this fall's provincial election.

"Health-care workers' lives only have value when indeed, and only if indeed, they re-elect a Liberal government," said the union's executive assistant, John Van Beek. "That is just absolute manipulation of the worst kind."

NDP health critic Shelley Martel, whose private member's bill would have mandated the use of safety needles had it not twice died on the order paper, said she was "appalled" it took an election for the government to take action.

The government's recent spate of spending announcements is designed to win votes, Conservative health critic Elizabeth Witmer said.

"How gullible do they think the voters are going to be?" she asked. "They could have done this [earlier] if they were really serious about protecting the health and safety of the health-care employees."

But Mr. Smitherman said financial constraints kept the government from making the announcement earlier.