Hi

It is possible that infections like HIV, hepatitis B & C can be transmitted if someone was poked by a needle that had some blood on it.

These infections will not live for long when they are outside the body so it really depends on how long the needle was there before you got poked. HIV does not survive for very long when it is outside the body but hepatitis B & C can survive for a period of time on a needle. In most cases not more than a few days but really depends on things like quantity of blood, type of needle, temperature, humidity etc…

Most of the time when someone gets HIV, hepatitis B or C they do not get any symptoms, given this the only way to find out if something has been passed to you is by going for a test.  As it has been 3 months since this has happened I would recommend going to see a health professional about getting a test. Three months is a long enough window period for these tests to be accurate.

If someone gets poked with a used needle the best thing to do is.

– Allow the wound to bleed freely and then cover lightly.
– Do not promote bleeding by cutting or squeezing the skin.
– Do not apply bleach to the wound or soak it in bleach.
– Go straight away to see a health professional for a risk assessment, the best place to go is usually the emergency department.

The reason it is best to go straight away for a risk assessment is because if there is a concern that HIV or hepatitis B has been passed to you. There is some medication you can get to reduce the chance of this happening ,but you need to take the medication within a certain time frame.

Please leave a comment to let us know if this answers your question or if you need more information.

Health Nurse

For other readers, please feel free to leave a comment, or let us know if this was helpful.