A proper strategy for combating mould

The article, published here in slightly adapted form, also focuses on the need for additional training of key personnel on the risks associated with exposure to environmental microbial contamination.

Facility managers in hospitals have a primary responsibility to provide a healthy and comfortable environment for both staff and patients. A primary care outcome for patients would be to send them home in a better health condition than when they arrived. However, there is recent concern in the hospital sector over the negative health outcomes from exposure to environmental microbiological contamination while both staying within, and working at, a hospital.

This concern is partly due to intensive media campaigns and several successful court outcomes that have successfully linked adverse health outcomes to exposure from mould and bacteria (e.g. Legionella). The publicity is heaping unwanted stress on the already overstretched resources of the public and private hospital system. This is causing extra delays in patient admittance, and management concerns, and raises new legal liabilities when dealing with patients and staff being exposed to these hazards. Because there is now a link between these new hazards and poor health outcomes, it is crucial that hospital facility managers and engineers equip themselves with best practice training in infection control, risk minimisation techniques, and other procedures, to manage these hazards on behalf of patients, staff, and the general public.