Posts Tagged ‘laundry’
Hospital privacy curtains prove to be laden with germs
The privacy curtains that separate care spaces in hospitals and clinics are frequently contaminated with potentially dangerous bacteria, researchers said in Chicago this week.
To avoid spreading those bugs, health care providers should make sure to wash their hands after routine contact with the curtains and before interacting with patients, Dr. Michael Ohl…said at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.
“There is growing recognition that the hospital environment plays an important role in the transmission of infections in the health care setting and it’s clear that these (privacy curtains) are potentially important sites of contamination because they are frequently touched by patients and providers,” Dr. Ohl told Reuters Health.
Health care providers often touch these curtains after they have washed their hands and then proceed to touch the patient. Further, these curtains often hang for a long time and are difficult to disinfect…
Tests detected Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, including the especially dangerous methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA), as well as various species of Enterococci — gut bacteria — some resistant to the newer antibiotic vancomycin.
The researchers used additional tests to identify specific vancomycin and methicillin-resistant strains to see whether the same strains were circulating and contaminating the curtains over and over.
The study found significant contamination that occurred very rapidly after new curtains were placed…
“The vast majority of curtains showed contamination with potentially significant bacteria within a week of first being hung, and many were hanging for longer than three or four weeks,” Dr. Ohl noted.
“We need to think about strategies to reduce the potential transfer of bacteria from curtains to patients,” he added. “The most intuitive, common sense strategy is (for health care workers) to wash hands after pulling the curtain and before seeing the patient. There are other strategies, such as more frequent disinfecting, but this would involve more use of disinfectant chemicals, and then there is the possibility of using microbial resistant fabrics. But handwashing is by far the most practical, and the cheapest intervention.”
How about reinstating the traditional hospital laundry? That’s gone by the boards in many hospitals. Outsourcing to save money and keep the beancounters on the board of directors happy.
Hospitals are supposed to be about healthcare, right?
Now, take my son – please!
An Italian couple have sought legal help to persuade their 41-year-old son to fly the nest.
The Venetian parents, who have not been named, say their son has a job but refuses to leave home and wants his clothes washed and his meals prepared. They have sought help from lawyers at the consumer association Adico.
Lawyer Andrea Camp said a letter was sent to the son, advising him to leave home in six days or face legal action. If he refuses, lawyers will ask a court in Venice to issue a protection order for the elderly parents against their son.
“We cannot do it any more,” the father was quoted as saying. “My wife is suffering from stress and had to be hospitalised. He [the son] has a good job but still lives at home…
The couple turned to Adico after hearing of a similar case earlier this month in which Adico persuaded a son to leave home. After he left, his parents changed the locks.
Har!
Escaped kangaroo goes on underwear stealing binge!
I’ll just stay quite still and no one will notice me
A kangaroo is for the high jump after escaping from its owner and going on a knicker-nicking spree.
Benji bounced from garden to garden collecting ladies’ lingerie as it went. The two-year-old marsupial was only caught when one victim looked out of her kitchen window and saw it hopping it with her undies.
A spokesman for the police in Prague, Czech Republic, explained: “We had a call from the kangaroo’s owner saying it had escaped. At the same time, we started getting reports of a number of thefts from washing lines.”
He added: “We didn’t think they could possibly be related until the animal was caught red-handed.”
Benji’s owner Petr Hlabovic, 35, said: “I’m very relieved to have him back. I’ve got no idea what he thought he was up to – he certainly didn’t pick up the habit from me.”
That’s what they all say.
Thanks, Ursarodinia
Americans fight for the right to dry their laundry in public
Carin Froehlich pegs her laundry to three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse, knowing that her actions annoy local officials who have asked her to stop.
Froehlich is among the growing number of people across America fighting for the right to dry their laundry outside against a rising tide of housing associations who oppose the practice despite its energy-saving green appeal.
Although there are no formal laws in this southeast Pennsylvania town against drying laundry outside, a town official called Froehlich to ask her to stop drying clothes in the sun. And she received two anonymous notes from neighbors saying they did not want to see her underwear flapping about…
The effervescent 54-year-old is one of a growing number of Americans demanding the right to dry laundry on clotheslines despite local rules and a culture that frowns on it.
Their interests are represented by Project Laundry List, a group that argues people can save money and reduce carbon emissions by not using their electric or gas dryers, according to the group’s executive director, Alexander Lee.
Widespread adoption of clotheslines could significantly reduce U.S. energy consumption, argued Lee, who said dryer use accounts for about 6 percent of U.S. residential electricity use…
His principal opponents are the housing associations such as condominiums and townhouse communities that are home to an estimated 60 million Americans, or about 20 percent of the population. About half of those organizations have ‘no hanging’ rules, Lee said, and enforce them with fines.
The United States has become a nation of whiners. Our populace wants government to take care of every problem – without paying for it. Our nation wants everyone to be free – as long as you don’t disagree with the tenets of several antique religions.
And interfering with someone’s view is becoming almost as heinous a crime here as it often is, say, outside the holiday home of some wealthy Brit – in an otherwise low income rural Garden of Eden.
We seem to be acquiring the worst of 19th Century class society in combination with the foolishness of theocracy.
