Sikandar K. Sherwani 1, 2, Faisal Rasheed 2, Tooba Amin 3, Rubina Jeelani 3and Shahana U. Kazmi1
1 Immunology and Infectious Disease Research Laboratory (IIDRL), Deptt of Microbiology, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan
2 Deptt of Microbiology, Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan
Introduction: Biosafety, is a concept that promotes safe laboratory practices, procedures and proper use of containment equipment and facilities by laboratory workers. In view of this, Biosafety Association of Pakistan (BSAP) is a non- profit organization , first and the leader in the profession of biological safety in Pakistan .BSAP is putting serious efforts to ensure proper handling, processing and containment of all microbes as well as samples of human or animal origin infected with select agents in diagnostic and health care settings by the laboratory personnel is essential to limiting the spread of infection and for the safety of community , environment and the health of our food crops , animals and their products.
Material and Method: Biosafety Association of Pakistan (BSAP), conducted a 6 months project to evaluate the Biosafety level of awareness in the pathological laboratories of Karachi, Pakistan. For this, a standard questionnaire was developed by BSAP experts comprising of a dozen of queries and BSAP team was sent to the entire city of Karachi that was basically divided into zones/ districts ( (the information and location of these pathological laboratories were collected by a local website database) to get first hand knowledge from the laboratory workers. BSAP team visited more than 20 hospital based (private and government) and 20 independent pathological laboratories. All the questionnaires were critically evaluated to draw some meaningful conclusion of the existing situation in the laboratories and to propose future directions to overcome the situation.
Results: Some of the major findings of this survey indicate more than 70% are not aware of the concept of Biosafety. It came to know that 50% of the workers disinfect the bench tops daily and only 30% use gloves while handling chemicals and infectious agents. It was analyzed that 46% of workers are aware of Laboratory Associated Infections (LAI) It was noted that 60% of the workers directly discard the syringes in the trash bin and 70% are involved in manual recapping of the needles. Moreover, 40% of technicians frequently fell ill since they joined the laboratory. It was also found out that only 44% of the workers were aware of the importance of PPEs and only 60% of the lab workers wear lab-coats while working. Only 34% of pathological laboratories were found to have developed their Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and 45% were found keeping their lab accidental records.
Conclusion: In view of the findings from this survey, it has concluded that current practices in Karachi based pathological laboratories are not very satisfactory. In order to ensure biosafe practices, there is dire need to develop SOPs and to encourage use of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) while handling clinical specimens. Moreover, biocontainment of these aerosols/ spills/ splashes is very necessary and every biological spill must be handled tactfully. Furthermore, mouth pipetting and manual recapping of syringes should be discouraged the habit of washing hands after working with pathogenic agents should be promoted to prevent exposures to potential human pathogens.