Environmental Control Including Ventilation In Hospitals

Abstract

Introduction People can suffer and even die as they are exposed to diseases they did not have when they come to the hospital. Often there are things, we as hospital planners and engineers could have done to prevent that germs from being there in the first place. These disease causing organisms enter the building on air supply, feed on moisture produce, breed in reservoirs installed, and move about on vehicles we maintain. Air contaminants, which includes fungus, mold, bacteria, inorganic, and organic matter, cause many problems from nuisance colds to fatal pneumonia. Legionnaire's disease, got it's name from the 1976 incident in Philadelphia where 34 members of the American Legion attending a convention, died of that previously unnamed pneumonia. After a much investigation, it was determined that the bacteria was distributed by the air-conditioning system. In this era of antibiotics, prevention of hospital acquired infections is too often seen as unimportant. It is commonly accepted that patients will sometimes suffer infections while in the hospital. So what! A shot of antibiotic penicillin and that little rash or fever is gone, right?. Not quite true, as, in the United States twenty thousand (20,000) people die every year as a direct result of nosocomial infections. Sixty thousand (60,000) others die where nosocomial infections are a contributing factor. Patients equaling five percent (5%) of the total admissions to US hospitals suffer some sort of hospital acquired infection (1). At an admission rate of 30-40 million people per year that means 1.5-2 million people are being infected in our hospitals every year. The engineering, architectural or medical communities have put very little emphasis on designing facilities for maximum infection control. Often those who built the facility did so on criteria that was more concerned with cost and aesthetics than reliability, serviceability, or asepsis. It is no longer enough for hospital engineers and planners to blindly accept what they design as the best for patients care.