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Date: Thursday, Dec. 4, 1997 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: HRSA Press Office (301)443-3376
By calling 1-888-448-4911 from anywhere in the United States 24 hours a day, clinicians can gain access to the National Clinicians' Post-Exposure Prophylaxis Hotline (PEPline). The PEPline has trained physicians prepared to give clinicians information, counseling and treatment recommendations for workers who have needle-stick injuries and other serious occupational exposures to blood-borne micro-organisms that lead to such serious infections or diseases as HIV or hepatitis.
"This new service gives health care workers, at the front line of health care delivery, all the options to better protect them from occupational injuries," said Secretary Shalala. "Clinicians--no matter when they call or where they live--can now quickly get state-of-the-art knowledge about how to help health care workers with needle-stick injuries."
The National Clinicians' PEPline is a joint project of the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in collaboration with the San Francisco Department of Public Health and the University of California, San Francisco. The new hotline combines and expands two existing programs at San Francisco General Hospital: the National HIV Telephone Consultation Service, or Warmline, funded by HRSA's AIDS Education and Training Center Program, and the UCSF/SFGH Epidemiology and Prevention Interventions Center Needle-Stick Hotline.
"Since the Warmline started in 1993, more than 18,000 HIV care providers have received assistance to ensure prompt, critical treatment for their patients," said Claude Earl Fox, M.D., M.P.H., acting administrator of HRSA. "Now the PEPline offers the same supportive assistance to health care workers on the front lines of HIV care delivery."
The CDC estimates at least 5,000 HIV needle exposures occur annually. Hepatitis and HIV infection pose the greatest risk to health care workers with needle-stick injuries.
People responsible for providing help to exposed health care workers are not uniformly knowledgeable about the difficult task of assessing risk and selecting the most appropriate interventions.
"During the past four years, the Warmline has received more than 900 calls about needle-sticks and other occupational exposures," said Fox. "Health care workers are justifiably concerned about this issue, and they need the most current information."
Co-directors for the PEPline are Ronald H. Goldschmidt, M.D., Warmline director, and Julie Gerberding, M.D., EPI Center director. Antiretroviral therapy is a potential life-saver and should be started as soon as possible after an exposure, according to the PEPline co-directors.