Mobile phones spreading infectious bugs in hospitals
POSTED March 7, 2009 - 16:05 | POSTED BY Shikha Patial
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on March 7, 2009 - 16:32
New York, March 7: A Turkish research report suggests that mobile phones used by healthcare staff may be a source of infection in hospitals.
Mobile phones used by healthcare workers are often germ-exposed and may infect the hospitalized patients causing various illnesses, said the report of the research conducted by Dr. Fatma Ulger and others at Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun.
The researchers found that doctors and other healthcare staff working in intensive care units and operating units are highly exposed to deadly germs. There, the mobile phones used by workers often become the germ-carriers and spread germs wherever they are taken along.
Mobile phones “may facilitate transmission of bacterial isolates from patient to patient in wards or hospitals,” the researchers cautioned.
For their research, Dr. Ulger and team checked the hands and mobile phones of 200 doctors, nurses, and other healthcare staff working in intensive care units and operation rooms. The team found 95 percent of mobile phones contaminated with microbes, and antibioticdefine-resistant bacteria, besides other potentially dangerous germs.
Some of the mobile phones of ICU workers carried highly infectious bugs, like staphylococci. These are common but potentially serious type of bacteria living on the skin and mucous membranes of humans, and are capable of causing serious skin infections and injuries.
On being questioned, 90 percent of the study participants said that they never cleaned their mobile phones.
The investigators have advised all the healthcare workers to regularly decontaminate their mobile phones with alcohol-containing disinfectants.
Special caution must be taken by anesthetists; they should use personal in-hospital mobile phone for a short phone call.
