Safety

The rapid and explosive rise in the number of HIV infected people world-wide raises many laboratory issues. The importance of safety while handling, sampling and analysing blood are therefore paramount.

Safety and disposal issues are poorly addressed in current systems and the failure of an infected blood culture, usually presented in the form of a fragile bottle under pressure, within a large, expensive instrument has severe financial, technical and safety implications.

Inoculation of conventional bottles creates significant risk of “Needle Stick” injury where specific safety features are absent.

Inoculation of a conventional bottle will create internal pressure, or mediate a negative pressure already inside the bottle. In either event, there is a variance between internal and external pressures creating the possibility for air to enter or gas (or aerosol) to exit past the inoculation needle.

The Bactest “Gemini” technology provides advanced safety features in containment, handling and disposal while testing of potentially hazardous blood samples, containing infections such as HIV and Hepatitis.

A range of structural designs, safety mechanisms and materials choices have been incorporated into the "Gemini" technology to avoid common safety issues such as “needle-stick” injury, bottle breakages or pressurised microbial aerosols.

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Needlestick accidents occur when healthcare workers jab themselves or a colleague with a needle, or other sharp medical device, which is contaminated with potentially infected blood.

Second only to back-injuries as a cause of occupational injury amongst NHS workers, an ongoing RCN surveillance project suggests that as many as 100,000 needlestick accidents occur in the UK every year.
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