Infection control in hospitals is of paramount importance in order to reduce the potential for healthcare associated infections (an infection whose development is favored by a healthcare environment.) Infection control is concerned with eliminating as many pathogenic microorganisms as possible and limiting their transfer. This covers a range of measures from handwashing, disinfection, selection of antimicrobial drugs, the treatment of Surfaces and so on. With surfaces, many types of microorganisms can persist for extended periods of time (some organisms can survive for longer than thirty days on standard surfaces); consequently touch-surfaces represent risk spots for pathogen transmission. In the hospital setting, some types of key equipment can be manufactured with antimicrobial touch components with the aim of making the surfaces self-disinfecting. For this a recent trend in the hospital setting has been to revisit the inherent antimicrobial properties of certain metals. A prominent example is the use, or incorporation of, copper.
Tim Sandle has written a review of the application of copper in hospitals. The reference is:
Sandle, T. (2017) Antimicrobial Copper Surfaces in hospitals, The Clinical Services Journal, 16 (6): 47-51
Posted by Dr. Tim Sandle
