Infection Control

Standards and Guidelines

Seeing the need for some form of guidance during construction for health care facilities, several organizations have recently published guidelines or standards.  In July 2001, Health Canada released the Canada Communicable Disease Report (CCDR) entitled “Construction-related Nosocomial Infections in Patients in Health Care Facilities: Decreasing the Risk of Aspergillus, Legionella and Other Infections”. Within this report are guidelines for risk assessment and specifications for control measures during construction.  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) released a recommendations report in June 2003 titled “Guidelines for Environmental Infection Control in Health-Care Facilities”.  Within this report, specific recommendations were made with respect to the use of dust-control procedures and barriers during construction.  In order to provide a guideline for preventing and controlling construction-related fungal and bacterial infections during the construction phase of projects, the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) released in May 2003, CSA Standard Z317.13-03, titled “Infection Control during Construction or Renovation of Health Care Facilities”.  This Standard, based largely on the CCDR document, describes precautionary and remedial measures for preventing exposure to agents released or augmented because of actions undertaken during health care facility construction, renovation, maintenance, and repair work.  This Standard applies not only to hospitals, but to all locations that support the delivery of health-related services, such as outpatient clinics, long-term care facilities, and physician’s offices.