The Prime Minister has decreed that hospitals be deep cleaned. One company says it can carry out the procedure, without needing to evict the patients
PRIME minister Gordon Brown has announced that NHS hospitals are to receive extra funds during the next 12 months to combat the incidence of MRSA and C Difficile diseases.

Hospitals will be returned to the state of cleanliness they were at the time of their opening the PM said in a News of the World article
Brown added that day-to-day cleaning was insufficient to solve all health problems

We know that, over time, ingrained cleanliness problems build up, especially in hard-to-reach places like ceilings and ventilation ducts, which cannot be dealt with by day-to-day cleaning.

'So during the next year, for the first time, every hospital will receive a deep clean designed to return our hospitals to the state they were in when they were built brand new.'

Ductbusters has been involved in ventilation system hygiene for the last 12 years. It says many hospitals have benefited from its experience in working to HTM 2025 and TR19 standards.

AHU and ductwork cleaning are its primary functions in sterile and general ward areas. A large NHS hospital in the Southampton area was not able to move its patients during the cleaning process. The problem was solved by using a relatively quiet brush-and-vacuum method of cleaning, and working in close consultation with the nursing staff.

The brush-and-vacuum method consists of working on anything up to 25m of ductwork at a time. Sections up to this length are blanked off so that a vacuum/suction device can be connected to one end via a grille opening or access door.

At the other end of the section, a rotary brush is inserted through a similar access point. The brush dislodges the dust from the internal surfaces of the ductwork which is then drawn away by the vacuum/suction unit.

This process is repeated until the end of the ventilation system is reached. Dust levels can be significantly reduced by this method to well below the thresholds mentioned in TR19. That is 60µm for supply, and 180µm for extract. At this level, the sterilisation process can take place to ensure that microbiological levels are below those set down in HTM 2025. That is 10cfu for sterile areas.

Ductbusters says that ceiling void and theatre deep cleans present no difficulty to it because it has performed these functions as part of handover cleaning on PFI projects in the Worcester and Derby areas.

Free site surveys are available from its team of surveyors to ascertain the amount of work involved in any potential project, the company says.