How to establish an effective Water Safety Group and associated Water Safety Plan as part of a determined strategy to keep a healthcare facility’s water system safe.
Water Safety Groups – and associated Water Safety Plans – were advocated as a key element of best practice in keeping healthcare facilities’ water systems safe, and minimising the risk of the growth and proliferation of harmful waterborne bacteria within such systems, in the HTM 04-01 Addendum, Pseudomonas aeruginosa – advice for augmented care units, published in March 2013. But what does a good water safety plan look like? Here Mike Quest, a water hygiene consultant and NHS Authorising Engineer (Water), provides some pointers on how to establish an effective such plan.
Crisis management of an outbreak of, say, Legionella, is too late, and is also expensive. Water Safety Plans, which in theory have been with us since 2013, should be the key to the control of waterborne infection through effective internal management of the processes, but we have yet to define what this best practice should look like ‘in the flesh’.
As estates and building managers you are, of course, familiar with ACOP L8 and HTM04-01 for the control of the risk of Legionella and other pathogens – so much so that you’d think the risk would surely be under control in hospitals and public places by now. Sadly, a quick look at the Public Health England statistics, and the drip feed of stories of prosecutions, tells another story. For July 2015, 48 cases were confirmed (a year to date total of 221).
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