Kaivac Inc. Infection Control: How One Prison Facility Addressed The Challenge A As with all crowded facilities, prisons must take infection control strategies seriously. A person who is sick — and for instance sneezing — can potentially spread his or her illness to scores of inmates and staff. One sneeze can release more than 40,000 droplets at a pace of as much as 100 miles per hour. This means that if the sneezer is nearby, there is little a person can do to avoid inhal-ing one or more of these 40,000 droplets, putting that individual and scores of other nearby individuals at risk for a cold, the flu or some other infection. And the problem doesn’t end there. Should the sneezer cover the sneeze with his or her hands and then come in contact with “common touch points” or CTPs (such as desks, light switches, hand rails, and water fountains), others who touch the same CTPs may also be exposed to cross-contamination and disease. What’s more, most germs and bacteria do not die or become harmless within sec-onds, as is commonly believed. Studies have revealed: ■ On paper or a cloth, the flu virus can survive for as long as 12 hours ■ On a nonporous surface, such as a doorknob or hand rail, the flu virus can survive up to 48 hours ■ On wet surfaces, the survival rate can be up to 72 hours* This means that in many settings includ-ing prison facilities, certain contagious germs and bacteria can live up to three days. The New Cleaning Model The most important and effective way cleaning professionals can meet this chal-lenge is to replace “old model” cleaning (the use of mops, wipes, buckets, cloths, etc.) with “new model” No-Touch ® cleaning systems. These new model cleaning systems were first developed about 15 years ago by Kaivac Inc. While the initial goal of these systems was to “professionalize” cleaning and cleaning workers as well as to help protect the health of workers (who would no lon-ger have to touch contaminated surfaces), the systems have proved to be among the most effective ways to hygienically clean surfaces. With these systems, metered amounts of chemicals are applied to surfaces, which are then rinsed after proper dwell time (usually a few minutes). Finally, contaminants, along with the cleaning chemicals and rinsing solution, are vacuumed up using a built-in vacuum. Such new model cleaning systems are used to clean the nearly 206,000-square-foot Wisconsin Secure Program Facility (WSPF) in Boscobel, Wisconsin. With nearly 2,000 inmate cells, WSPF is the only institution in the state’s Department of Corrections that has no inmate workers assisting with cleaning; all of the facility’s cleaning work is handled by cleaning pro-fessionals. As with other prison facilities, WSPF is concerned about the spread of disease, especially MRSA. ** In crowded and confined prison set-tings, the spread of infectious germs and bacteria, as well as antibiotic-resistant dis-eases such as MRSA, can obviously have serious health implications for inmates and staff. However, according to prison officials, “The Kaivac system decreases the risk of contamination to both staff and inmates.” As a side benefit, prison officials add, “It also allows [cleaning] staff to be in and out of areas more rapidly, improving worker productivity and increasing the number of cells cleaned.”** Prison administrators have determined that the No-Touch system has helped to decrease the risk of contamination in their facility. This finding has also been presented at the Cleaning Industry Research Institute (CIRI), which concluded that cleaning with No-Touch cleaning systems more effec-tively removes contaminants from surfac-es than conventional, old model cleaning procedures. With the risks so high and the problem so great, it is reasonable to conclude that transferring to new-model cleaning and No-Touch cleaning technologies is more important now than ever before. * Source, Australian Government Department of Health and Aging ** Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a bacterium responsible for several difficult-to-treat infections in humans. ** Studies by ISSA report that using No-Touch equipment can be as much as two-thirds faster than using conventional cleaning equipment such as mops and buckets. CM FREE INFO: Reader Service 301 or CMMOnline.com/freeinfo This content was provided by Kaivac as part of a paid advertisement. For more information, please contact Kaivac directly at 1-800-287-1136 or www.kaivac.com. www.cmmonline.com 29
CMM – Archives February 2014: 29
