Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Canadian healthcare providers are re-examining their cleaning strategies
Aging demographics and a spike in chronic conditions amongst Canadians, combined with increased turnover of hospital rooms, has forced healthcare providers to rethink their strategies for protecting patients at their most critical moments.
The threat is real. More than 200,000 patients get infections every year while receiving healthcare in Canada and more than 8,000 of these patients die as a result, according to a 2013 report from Canada's chief public health officer.
To protect patients, hospitals have had to bolster their infection control teams and collaboration between infection prevention and environmental services as well as critical staff.
Clorox Healthcare Canada's innovative array of disinfecting solutions are helping healthcare professionals lead the fight against emerging hospital-borne infections, safeguarding patients in the places where they're most vulnerable.
"There's been a greater effort to detect these bugs," explains Barley Chironda MSc, RPN, CIC healthcare national sales director and infection control specialist at Clorox Healthcare Canada. "What hospitals have realised is when there's a strong relationship between the infection prevention control and environmental services teams, then you actually have better compliance and reduced infection rates - so that collaboration between those two stakeholders is significant."
To keep pace with the healthcare industry's evolving needs, Clorox Healthcare Canada has bolstered its own research surrounding microbiology, sporicidal agents and infection prevention. The result is a stream of innovative new products specifically for the hospital environment including Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner Disinfectant Wipes, Bleach Germidical Wipes and Fusion Cleaner Disinfectant, a next-generation bleach product combining disinfecting efficacy against pathogens with broad surface compatibility.
The suite of ready-to-use facility-wide disinfectants for healthcare professionals tackle emerging pathogens like Clostridium difficile spores, a bacterium causing serious illness in Canadian hospitals.
"One of the reasons C. difficile spreads so much is it creates that hard spore shell, making it extremely challenging to kill," explains Barley. "What we've been able to do at Clorox Healthcare is combine the technology of the bleach in the form of a wipe, making it a simple and efficient cleaning process."
Clorox Healthcare Canada offers a robust portfolio of surface cleaner-disinfectants, in addition to UV technology, to provide healthcare facilities with a comprehensive approach to environmental hygiene in efforts to prevent hospital-borne infections. Long trusted as a leader in disinfectant efficacy, Clorox Healthcare Canada also understands the challenges facilities face in balancing the need to prevent infections while protecting surfaces and costly equipment from damage.
Where sensitive surfaces require non-bleach solutions, Clorox Healthcare Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner Disinfectant Wipes is a bleach alternative that kills 38 pathogens in one minute or less. The Professional Disinfecting Bleach Wipes wipes provide broad-spectrum antimicrobial efficacy, able to combat 46 pathogens with kill times of one minute and effective against C. difficile spores in three minutes.
"C. difficile is the most critical pathogen facing healthcare, tomorrow it could be Ebola, the day after that it could be SARS, over the last couple of years we've had so many emerging threats," notes Barley. "For years Clorox Healthcare Canada has led the field with disinfectants that healthcare facilities trust for their broad efficacy, fast kill times and ease of use, so when emerging pathogens come through the doors, hospitals are even more prepared."
1st March 2018