Combining copper with effective hygiene

Copper – for many centuries known for its antimicrobial properties – is increasingly being used in hospitals and other healthcare facilities worldwide as an aid to infection control and reducing healthcareassociated infections. Here Tim Sandle, head of Microbiology at Bio Products Laboratory, discusses how antimicrobial surfaces incorporating copper can assist with hospital infection control programmes and the fight against nosocomial infection.

Infection control is concerned with eliminating as many pathogenic microorganisms as possible and limiting their transfer. This covers a range of measures – from handwashing and disinfection to selection of antimicrobial drugs, and treatment of surfaces.1 With surfaces, many types of microorganisms can persist for extended periods of time (some organisms can survive for longer than 30 days on standard surfaces);2 consequently touch-surfaces represent risk spots for pathogen transmission. In the hospital setting, some types of key equipment can be manufactured with antimicrobial touch components with the aim of making the surfaces selfdisinfecting. For this a recent trend in the hospital setting has been to revisit the inherent antimicrobial properties of certain metals. A prominent example is the use, or incorporation of, copper.3

Contamination transfer