Mobile phones can spread infections in the hospital

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INVC,,

Delhi,,

Mobile phones used by hospital healthcare workers are often contaminated with germs, including those that can cause illness in hospitalized patients, said Dr. KK Aggarwal, Padma Shri & Dr. B.C. Roy National Awardee and President, Heart Care Foundation of India.

Quoting a Turkish study published in the BMC journal Annals of Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobials, Dr Aggarwal said that Dr. Fatma Ulger and others at Ondokuz Mayis University, Samsun, swabbed the dominant hand and the mobile phones of 200 doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff working in intensive care units and operating rooms and found that 95 percent of telephones were contaminated, often with more than one type of microbe and often with antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Potentially serious infectious bugs such as staphylococci were isolated from phones in intensive care units.

90% of health care workers said they never cleaned their mobile phones. The investigators recommend routine decontamination of mobile phones with alcohol-containing disinfectants.

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