Dr Ojan Assadian – president of the Austrian Society for Infection Control and a team from Novaerus, a global company working to disinfect and purify indoor air for optimal human health, examine the current limitations of hand hygiene and surface cleaning. They believe a third strategy - air disinfection, to inactivate viable particles before they settle on surfaces, can provide additional protection against infection.
Hospitals today face an acute crisis: the spread of infection among patients. In highincome countries, 5% to 10% of hospitalised patients - including 30% of patients in intensive care units - contract an infection during their stay.1 Each year, in Europe2 and the United States,3 hospital pathogens infect nearly 6 million patients and are responsible for 140,000 deaths.
On any given day, more than 1.4 m hospitalised patients around the world4 and 80,000 in Europe5 are estimated to have at least one healthcare associated infection; compared to other patients, they may be 80% more likely to die within 90 days.6 In developing countries, as the World Health Organization (WHO) notes, the childhood death rate from hospital acquired infections equates to “a plane crashing every hour.”7
Even the cleanest hospitals can serve as breeding grounds for dangerous microbes. Viral particles launched by a sneeze - or by a change of bed linens - hover in the air, to be inhaled by patients or to land on intravenous poles. Pathogens deposited into a box of surgical gloves hitch a ride, via central line, to a patient’s bloodstream, or via catheter to the urinary tract. Bacteria travel from the bed rail of an infected patient to the hands of a nurse, and from there to vulnerable patients.8
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