Identifying and cleaning touchpoints is the best practice to control the spread of germs in homes, schools, and businesses. Touchpoints are the places where germs can sit and wait to infect the next person.
The “handshake” is the ultimate touchpoint where we transfer communicable diseases to each other in the name of greeting each other. We do this ritual everywhere from the workplace, and grocery store to our houses of worship. In times of communicable diseases, the elbow bump makes a lot more sense than the handshake.
In the cases where someone in a home has a serious illness such as C-Diff or MRSA, every linen, TV remote or candy dish they touched can be the source of reinfection. The more serious the illness and worse the immune system of occupants, the more critical disinfection of a property becomes to stop the spread of an illness.
The good news is that there are some excellent disinfection systems and programs that were originally designed for medical facilities that are now available for use in any type of property. Once we identify a risk, we can implement effective solutions for just about every cause of Sick Building Syndrome.
Suggestions for Stopping the Spread of Illness in the Home
It is really, really hard to pay attention to details and healthy practices when we are sick with a nasty bug. The only way this works in most households is to put these habits into practice before there is a sick person in the home. If you don’t have disposable plates and cups in the cupboard before illness, you are not going to the store to buy them after you are tending the sick.
Suggestions for Stopping the Spread of Illness in the Workplace
The best solution is to have a plan in place before dealing with the illness and human resource challenges that a sick workforce can bring to a professional organization. There are consultants that can set programs in place that can work for just about any facility. It is a matter of their establishing a system of communicating responsibility and direction for the workforce.
The New Technology for High Risk Patients or Serious Illnesses
“Touchless Disinfection” is the new “hospital grade” answer to serious disease contagions. This name is not descriptive, so please let me describe the process.
Before this process is started, all of the touchpoints should be disinfected as a pre-treatment to extend the time that the treatment is effective.
A specialized fine mist spray equipment device is placed in each sealed room. The ultra-fine mist of hydrogen peroxide and silver nitrate penetrates into cracks and crevices of the room and effectively kills the biological contaminants.
The advantage of this process is that it gets all of the surfaces. By comparison, human workers are usually not that effective. The room must remain sealed and can’t be entered until the end of the cycle when the peroxide product breaks down into harmless components.
Though originally designed and predominantly used in medical facilities, the health of a patient at home is as important as it is in a hospital room. Equipment to perform the treatment can be purchased, or the work can be done by trained professionals as a service. This is a new service and not available in all areas.
For links and additional information about disease control and disinfection, go to: www.PittsburghMoldTesting.com/diseasecontrol
Protecting From Communicable Disease as Printed H2H.pdf It seems like a bad science fiction movie, or maybe if you like the stuff a “good science fiction movie” made real. You know the story, new virus, bacteria, nasty chemical, whatever contaminant emerges and there is not any way to stop it. Or so it seems, except for the heroic discovery of the scientist who is helped by the government agency security person that stops the evil perpetrator of the biological threat to all of humanity.
The truth is that we are fighting newly evolved viruses and bacteria. We live longer and survive with diseases and conditions that would have killed the last generation. The cost of that survival is often weakened immune systems.
To give a gift of continued life, we take organs out of one person and give them to save a recipient. Then we lower the immune system of the recipient so that their body does not attack the new organ.
The problem is that we have slowly been creating some of those superbugs in the course of the practice of modern medicine. Evolution is a part of the natural plan. We may kill most of the bacteria or virus that made someone ill, and a couple of the little bugs survive. These stronger biological nightmares reproduce. Repeat treatment, repeat strongest bug survive and bingo…. bango pretty soon penicillin no longer saves the day. New treatments evolve and at some point the bacteria or viruses get ahead of medicine.
Add to that the evolution of existing “bugs”, some of these afflictions such as HIV or Ebola that first prey upon our close genetic relatives like the monkey and then “come on over” to mankind. The Center for Disease Control’s latest infection health crisis is CRE, a Colistin resistant form, of E. coli. In some cases, this superbug kills up to 50 percent of the infected patients. This is one of many new infectious agents. This particular one started with pigs in China.
We live in a society where we travel across continents in a day in close quarters carrying each of our biological exposures along with us for the ride. CRE is now in the United States.
We learned from the news stories of the UPMC organ transplant program deaths that mold exposure can result in death of the organ recipient. We need to consider that If mold can be deadly in a hospital, it can be deadly in the home when a patient leaves the hospital.
The tricky thing is that the most likely to acquire a disease or infection are the same people who are the most difficult to cure. Many of us are exposed to serious health threats each day. As an example, the infection rate for Legionella exposure is less than 5%. More simply put, 95% of those in contact with Legionella do not get sick.
MRSA, C-diff, Hepatitis, Rotavirus, flu, Pneumonia, Meningitis and Strep Throat are some of the many diseases we face. Health issues from molds and other chemical contaminants get added to the lists of threat to public health.
Those most likely to get ill from a biological exposure