POLICE ASSOCIATION OF NOVA SCOTIA 47 Nationwide legislation is required to force drug users to provide blood samples when someone has received a needle-prick injury, female law enforcement members heard Thursday. “What we’re hoping for is that all the provinces, and that’s where you come in, will take up this torch and run with it,” Ottawa Police Sgt. Isobel Anderson said to about 140 participants of the Atlantic Women in Law Enforcement Conference, in Truro. “It’s an issue that affects all of us. It affects our families.” After being stuck by a needle while responding to a robbery call in Ottawa in 1997, Anderson had to live with the initial horror that she might have been exposed to the AIDS-causing HIV virus or Hepatitis C, both of which can be contracted after being exposed to the bodily fluids of an affected individual. After receiving the injury, Anderson realized that her department had no policy or support program to deal with such situations. And she also realized, much to her chagrin, that there was no way to force drug users to produce a blood sample after someone had been injured by a needle prick. When she pulled her arm from the suspect’s pocket, Anderson found the needle still stuck in her hand and quickly realized that it also contained an amount of his blood which was now “deeply embedded” under her own skin. “My first thought was, ‘oh my God, I have AIDS,’” she said. “In such situations, needle-injured persons have a twohour window in which to seek medical aid and consume a “chemical cocktail” that will help prevent against contracting AIDS. (The cocktail, however, is powerless against Hepatitis C.) Beyond having no support program in place at her workplace, Anderson said, her emotional and psychological trauma were intensified when colleagues informed her the suspect was refusing to co-operate by producing a blood sample. She eventually learned that she had not contracted either virus but outside of the personal worry for herself and family about the potential outcome, the experience became the “catalyst” that destroyed her marriage. Anderson decided no one should have to deal with the unnecessary trauma that she was forced to live through and she determined to do something about it. Beginning with a letter to her constituency MP and working with the support of her department chief, Anderson set in motion the wheels of change to protect workers or Good Samaritans who stand the chance of being injured by such encounters. It took several years of personal persistence and the recruitment of political clout, but on Sept. 1, in great part through Anderson’s efforts, Ontario became the first province to introduce the type of legislation for which she had been pushing. One of the big stumbling blocks, she said, was dealing with Charter of Rights a rguments over the protection of individual rights to privacy. And while she believes wholeheartedly in those rights, she is also adamant they “should not outweigh someone else’s rights to health & safety”. But Anderson is also just as adamant that the protection now available to Ontario’s emergency service providers, should be universal across Canada. “If we present a united voice from across the country, they cannot ignore us for too long,” she said in concluding her ovation-generating speech. GETTING BLOOD SAMPLES from drug users requires legislation By Harry Sullivan- Truro Daily News continued... HARRY SULLIVANTruro Daily News Sgt. Isobel Anderson, left, of the Ottawa Police and Truro Police Const. Shari Roberts share a common bond in pushing for new blood sample legislation in Canada - both women received needle-stick injuries during their professional duties.
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