Copper – a weapon in the war on pathogens

Here Angela Vessey, director of the Copper Development Association (CDA) in the UK, describes some of the latest evidence from installations and studies worldwide of how using anti-microbial copper for common hospital items and surfaces can help to reduce environmental contamination, and thus lower healthcare-acquired infection rates.

Given the ability of many potentially harmful bacteria to survive for lengthy periods, the fabricated surfaces in wards and other clinical and non-clinical ‘spaces’ within a typical hospital can serve as reservoirs of infectious bacteria that can be transferred to hands and around a facility, consequently serving as direct or indirect transmission pathways, and presenting a risk to patients. Cleaning and disinfection are key to tackling this problem, but are frequently inadequate. More needs to be done, without burdening already over-stretched nursing and cleaning staff. The strategic placement of an effective and durable antimicrobial material offers another weapon in the war on pathogens. Laboratory experiments have found that, on copper, and many of its alloys, pathogens such as MRSA and E. coli die very rapidly. In the clinical environment, copper surfaces have been shown to continuously reduce bioburden by over 80% compared with control surfaces, over periods of many months. Fewer pathogens, logically, means a more hygienic, safer patient environment, but until recently, there was no evidence to link reduced environmental contamination with improved patient outcomes.

Study results published