Vinyl Furniture Selected to Help Curb Hospital Infections

MELBOURNE, Australia, Jan. 4, 2008 (VNS) – One of Australia’s leading hospitals announced a major investment in vinyl furniture to help curb dangerous infections. Other major hospitals are likely to follow suit, according to the Melbourne Age.

At the state-of-the-art Austin Hospital, opened in 2005, thousands of vinyl chairs are being bought to replace patient chairs made with fabric materials after it was discovered that a highly infectious and potentially deadly germ known as VRE was present in the existing harder-to-clean fabric chairs.

Initially, the vinyl chairs will replace existing furniture in areas caring for the most vulnerable patients, the hospital said. Eventually, vinyl will replace thousands of fabric chairs throughout the hospital.

After an increase in VRE cases, the hospital’s director of infectious diseases analyzed the environment in one of the wards for critically ill patients and traced the cause to the fabric patient chairs. The chairs were removed and a rigorous “terminal clean” was ordered.

Outbreaks of VRE (vancomycin resistant enterococcus) have also been reported at other leading hospitals in Australia and the Austin hospital’s experience has been shared with the country’s infection control community, the Age reports.