Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 19 December 2012
185. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Health the extent to which steps are taken to prevent the spread of various hospital bugs including MRSA, all air borne and other infections; if the major cause or causes of such infections have been identified; if the visit of children to hospitals has been restricted; the extent to which normal preventative measures are enforced; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57315/12]
Amharc ar fhreagraI would like to assure you that the management of Healthcare Acquired Infections (HCAIs) is a key patient safety issue for my Department and a number of significant initiatives have been developed to address that important public health issue. Isolation precautions are used to reduce transmission of micro-organisms in healthcare and residential settings. These measures are designed to protect patients/residents, staff and visitors from contact with infectious agents. There are two categories of isolation precautions: standard precautions and transmission-based precautions.
Standard precautions are a set of basic infection prevention practices intended to prevent transmission of infectious diseases from one person to another. Because we do not always know if a person has an infectious disease, standard precautions are applied to every person every time to assure that transmission of disease does not occur. These precautions were formerly known as "universal precautions." Standard precautions include:
- Hand hygiene
- Personal protective equipment
- Environmental and equipment cleaning & disinfection
- Safe injection practices
There are three types of transmission-based precautions;
- Contact precautions (for diseases spread by direct or indirect contact)
- Droplet precautions (for diseases spread by large particles in the air) and
- Airborne precautions (for diseases spread by small particles in the air).
Each type of precautions has some unique prevention steps that should be taken, but all have standard precautions as their foundation. Each hospital should have mechanisms in place to detect clusters/outbreaks of infections in a timely manner and notify to public health. The outbreak control team then agrees the appropriate preventative measures that need to be implemented which may include visitor restrictions as appropriate.
