Hepatitis B immune status of staff in smaller acute healthcare facilities
Alex Hoskins A , Leon James Worth A B , Michael James Malloy A , Katherine Walker A , Ann Bull A and Noleen Bennett A C *A Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System (VICNISS) Coordinating Centre, Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Melbourne, Vic. 3000, Australia.
B Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic. 3065, Australia.
C Department of Nursing, Melbourne School of Health Sciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Vic. 3065, Australia.
Australian Health Review 47(2) 254-257 https://doi.org/10.1071/AH22219
Submitted: 24 August 2022 Accepted: 9 February 2023 Published: 7 March 2023
© 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing on behalf of AHHA. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND)
Abstract
Objective To determine the proportion of staff employed in smaller Victorian public acute healthcare facilities with evidence of immunity to hepatitis B.
Methods For optimal long-term immunity, a completed hepatitis B vaccination course and post vaccination hepatitis B surface antibody (anti-HBs) level ≥10 mIU/mL is desirable for all high-risk staff employed in healthcare facilities. For the financial years 2016/17–2019/20, a standardised surveillance module developed by the Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System (VICNISS) Coordinating Centre was completed by the smaller Victorian public acute healthcare facilities (individual hospitals with <100 acute care beds or their multi-site health service). Staff were assessed as having evidence or no evidence of optimal immunity to hepatitis B. Those without optimal evidence were sub-classified as ‘incomplete vaccination course’, ‘no serology’, ‘contraindicated’, ‘non-responder’, ‘declined’ or ‘unknown’. Data were analysed to determine trends over time for healthcare facilities that participated more than once.
Results A total of 88 healthcare facilities reported hepatitis B immunity status of high-risk (Category A) staff (n = 29 920) at least once over 5 years; 55 healthcare facilities reported more than once. The aggregate proportion with evidence of optimal immunity was 66.3%. Healthcare facilities with 100–199 Category A staff employed reported the lowest evidence of optimal immunity (59.6%). Of all Category A staff with no evidence of optimal immunity, the majority had ‘unknown’ status (19.8%), with only 0.6% overall who declined vaccination.
Conclusions Our study found evidence of optimal staff hepatitis B immunity in only two-thirds of Category A staff working in surveyed healthcare facilities.
Keywords: healthcare facilities, healthcare workers, hepatitis B, immunisation, immunity, surveillance, survey, vaccination.
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