Hospital Cleaning & Infection Prevention in the Pacific Islands - February 2025

Meetting recording to be uploaded here soon.

It was great to see so many of you join us for Thursday's IPC Journal Club for 2025.  Darran's presentation gave us a great summary of the important issues to consider in the cleaning of our healthcare facility environment and the appropriate products for the different surfaces and cleaning tasks involved.  The presentation and recording will soon be posted on the PRIDA website 
(Pacific Region Infectious Diseases Association - IPC Journal club), so we encourage you to share this will the managers and personnel in your facility's cleaning service and other departments.  Effective environmental cleaning is a team effort!

Here are some resources which maybe helpful in considering your service's environmental cleaning procedures:

• CDC Environmental Cleaning in Global Health Settings https://www.cdc.gov/healthcare-associated-infections/hcp/cleaning-global/index.html . This website discusses Environmental Cleaning considerations and you can paste the links below into your internet browser to access these additional resources "Best Practices for Environmental Cleaning in Healthcare Facilities in Resource-Limited Settings" (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://depts.washington.edu/edgh/app-ipc/web/project-resources/cdc-environmental-cleaning-manual.pdf) and an "Environmental Cleaning Program Improvement Toolkit"  (chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.cdc.gov/healthcare-associated-infections/media/pdfs/environmental-cleaning-toolkit-guide-508.pdf). 
    
• International Society for Infectious Diseases Guide to Infection Control in the Healthcare Setting (https://isid.org/guide/#1610121616615-d71c0fa5-a2cf) - this extensive guide has chapters about Disinfection in the Hospital Environment and Patient Areas and Enviromental Cleaning 
    
• WHO IPC Training Resources - Environmental Cleaning.  This website has training resources for a number of IPC areas including Environmental Cleaning   https://www.who.int/teams/integrated-health-services/infection-prevention-control/ipc-training-resources#environment
    
• Environmental Cleaning in Resource-Limited Settings - This is a journal article talks about how environmental surfaces in healthcare facilities, particularly in a patient room, are a critical pathway for healthcare-associated pathogen transmission. It discusses the practice of environmental cleaning in resource-limited settings including challenges and relationship between environment and healthcare-associated infections in this setting and outlines ways to overcome these challenges.  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40506-018-0149-9
    
• The Whiteley Corporation (Darran's company https://www.whiteley.com.au/education/) also has some short educational videos on topics such as Biofilm formation, Cleaning vs Disinfection and Handwashing.
    
• Here is a link to a flow chart to help with choosing the right product for environmental cleaning tasks. https://www.safetyandquality.gov.au/publications-and-resources/resource-library/flowchart-process-and-product-selection-routine-environmental-cleaning
    
• Attached is a copy of the WHO "How to dilute and use Bleach" chart.