What is infection control?

Infection control is the discipline concerned with preventing healthcare associated or hospital acquired infections (HAIs). The goal of infection control professionals is to stop the spread of infection between patients and staff. Common HAIs include Clostridium difficile (C.diff), Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and Norovirus (AKA Winter vomiting virus). Further information on dangerous infections can be found HERE 

Preventative Measures in Hospitals

Staff Health - All health workers are immunised against rubella, measles and chicken Pox; they are also offered a yearly flu vaccination. Individuals with symptoms of infection do not have direct contact with neonates.

Hand Washing - Medical and hospital personnel must follow careful hand-washing procedures to minimise transmission of disease. They should remove rings, watches, and bracelets before washing their hands and entering the neonatal nursery.

Visitors - Risk of infection from visiting friends and family is high, therefore visitors are encouraged to wash their hands before patient contact.  A child with fever or symptoms of illness should not be allowed to visit.

Staff Dress - A dress code exists for all personal that enter the neonatal unit, which establishes such things as the use of gloves when initially handling the neonate, until blood and amniotic fluid has been removed from the skin. 

Clothing - Many hospitals are now encouraging parents to provide clothes in which to dress their baby, in efforts to control cross infection within neonatal units. Laundry bags are provided for own clothes, ensuring they are laundered separately from hospital clothing and used by one baby only.

Established Procedures - are also in place for general housekeeping, Cleaning & Disinfecting Patient Care Equipment and the laundering of Neonatal Linen – clean and soiled; this includes the laundering of clothing.

An infection and contamination control business, who manufacture a proprietary chlorine dioxide formulation used to disinfect instruments and surfaces and to control legionella in water.  Tristel’s products are considered to be amongst the highest performing biocides available to hospitals and industry, killing all pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungi and spores, in short exposure times.

So to help protect your highly vulnerable premature baby from dangerous infections, you can use Tristel products on all hard surfaces in your baby’s environment. This includes nasogastric feeding and/or oxygen support tubes and equipment. And any hard surface that you may touch before touching your baby, or that your baby may come into contact with directly. Tristel Protect is available HERE

The NHS cleaning manual recommends Tristel’s chlorine dioxide technology

In their fight against hospital acquired infections (HAIs), infection control nurses in UK hospitals take guidance from the NHS National Patient Safety Agency’s (NPSA) Revised Healthcare Cleaning Manual. To fight outbreaks of dangerous infections (like c.diff, Norovirus and MRSA), and to prevent them from occurring in the first place, the NPSA has recommended that hospitals use new products and technologies. This is basically because traditional disinfectant-cleaners aren’t really good enough, they can take too long to work and/or they are not safe to use around patients. Recommended technologies include chlorine dioxide based cleaner-disinfectants. This technology has been clinically proven to be highly effective, safe, and easy to use around patients.  Only Tristel products come in this form. 

Protect Teddy & Me