Economic Burden of Needle-Stick Injury Among Healthcare Workers in China

Abstract

groups based on 2014 OECD GDP purchasing power parity (PPP); High, Middle and low income countries. Pharma Price Information (PPI) data and Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare data were used for European and Japanese drug prices, respectively. Korean reimbursement prices and sales volume in 2016 is used for Korean prices. Prices were compared in two different ways; simple average price ratio compared with Korean average price and Laspeyres index where Korean volume weight was applied to conduct 1:1 comparison with each reference country. We used both nominal exchange rate and PPP adjusted exchange rate. RESULTS: Drugs used in this study account for 13.6% of reimbursement volume and 22.4% of reimbursement value in Korea. Cardiovascular drugs, gastrointestinal drugs, systemic antibiotic drugs and neurological disorder drugs comprised most of the volume. In general, Korean drug price level is similar to reference countries while volume-weighted average price is higher than those of reference countries. (simple comparison: 0.97-0.99 vs. Laspeyres index: 0.65-0.66). Although high income countries had generally higher level of drug prices, the level of low income countries becomes higher than high income countries when PPP adjusted exchange rate is applied. CONCLUSIONS: This study compared prices of substances with largest impact on market, hence providing representativeness to the result. Since price levels differ depending on types of prices, Korean government needs to consider volume-weighted pricing for reimbursement of pharmaceuticals.

Cost of Blood and Body Fluid Occupational Exposure Management in Beijing, China

“…In China, although guidelines for the prevention of occupational BBF exposure have been proposed (see Table S1), governmental regulations have yet to be established through legislative procedures to enforce the management of BBF occupational exposure [11][12][13][14][15]. Consequently, the incidence of BBF exposure among healthcare staff is significantly higher in China than in other countries with specific governmental rules [16][17][18][19].…”

“…Indeed, very limited research has been performed to determine BBF occupational exposure cost in China. In 2018, Zhang and colleagues estimated that one needlestick injury would trigger a post-exposure management cost of RMB 515 (USD 78) in China, but this result was based on data from foreign countries and eight opinion leaders [19], and thus lacked data of China's healthcare system. In 2019, Zhao and colleagues reported that one insulin injection-related needlestick injury costs between RMB 1884 (USD 285) and RMB 2389 (USD 361) [25].…”