Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 11th April 2024 Issue no. 1109
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Germgard Lighting demonstrates two-second, bare and gloved hand sterilisation
Germgard Lighting has developed, tested, and confirmed by independent testing that a small UVC dispenser - specifically designed for sterilising bare or gloved hands safely and quickly - achieves -6log10 inactivation of all relevant pathogens, including tough-to-kill Clostridium difficile spores. It has developed a simple, proprietary means to protect bare skin from UVC exposure. Sterilisation of gloved or bare hands is implemented within a few seconds including an exposure time of only two seconds.
In contrast, current bare hand hygiene approaches - handwashing or use of alcohol rubs before and after patient visits, often referred to as a 'wash in, wash out' - limit the ability to sanitise and, in fact, fall somewhat short of the nominal sanitation goal of -log10 inactivation.
Alcohol rubs generally require 30 seconds and handwashing requires at least one minute. Either can irritate the hands. As a result, both techniques can limit the compliance rate for hand hygiene before and after patient visits, to well under 100%.
Substantial efforts to increase the compliance rate have so far had limited effectiveness. As a result, hospital acquired infection rates continue essentially unchecked.
Germgard Lighting makes the following observations, which it believes cannot be challenged:
* Increased hand hygiene compliance with a broad efficacy solution would lower infection rates.
* Placing the UVC dispenser in any convenient location should raise the compliance rate over a similarly placed alcohol dispenser since it takes only two seconds for the sanitation step and does not irritate bare hands.
* With respect to between-patient hand sanitation, the replacement of an alcohol dispenser or sink with this innovative, complete, sterilisation solution would be more effective on bare hands at any comparable level of compliance, lowering the infection risk from any pathogen appearing in the hospital environment.
In addition, the WHO strongly suggests, because surfaces in the room are unavoidably contaminated, the use of bedside hand sanitation each and every time healthcare workers (HCWs) or visitors are about to administer to or touch the patient, or the patient surroundings.
WHO refers to this requirement as "the critical five moments of hand sanitation".
Published papers suggest that effective hand sanitation as per WHO requires over 100 to 180 implementations per day per HCW: approximately 100 minutes of dedicated hand sanitation daily. Given the current low rate of HCW compliance with the far less demanding 'wash-in, wash-out' approach and the associated time and hand irritation limitations, the WHO recommendations are not feasible with current technology.
Moreover, gloved hands are not sanitised before and during use yet are also vectors for transmission of pathogens in both the OR and the ICU during patient care. Furthermore, no requirements are put on visitor hand sanitation.
"Not surprisingly, with such ineffective solutions and low compliance, progress in infection rate reduction has been minimal," says the company. "Accordingly, HAI continues to impose enormous financial, legal, and staff burdens on hospitals and clinical care facilities, and tragedy for patients, their families and their friends.
"The needed improvement demands new technologies and approaches that go beyond simply focusing on increased compliance with current solutions. Germgard has overcome all the above-stated limitations of current approaches with its proven bare and gloved hand UVC sterilisation system.
Dr. Eugene Gordon, Germgard's CEO, says: "Our breakthrough, patent-applied-for technology represents an extraordinary, unique, and effective solution to the critical infection need: fast and effective bare and gloved hand sterilisation in surgery, in ICUs, and in patient rooms."
T: 973-607-1538
E: [email protected]
W: www.germgardlighting.com
30th June 2011