#FF Don’t be a Summer Simpleton!

Many events this week and next signify the end of another school year. Teachers are counting down the hours, minutes and likely seconds, kids are as excited as Christmas morning and parents are panicking and have probably already counted the number of days until the next school year starts – about 64 days… Summer of course can also mean the beginning of summer school, catching up on reading during vacation or if you’d prefer listening to podcasts or teleclasses, the following may be right up your alley!

As noted in past blogs, the Teleclass Education by Webber Training is an international lecture series on topics related to infection prevention and control. The objective is to bring the best possible education to the widest possible audience with the fewest possible barriers when trying to access it. Here's the list of teleclasses for the third quarter of 2019.

For more information on Webber Training, including a full list of the upcoming Infection Prevention and Control Teleclasses, please visit www.webbertraining.com

I hope many of you will take the opportunity to listen to these teleclasses and share them with your colleagues! After all, learning doesn’t have to end with the school year! 

Bugging Off!

Nicole

Is Nipah Virus our New Nemesis?

I admit that I’m a bit of an outbreak addict. I’m fascinated, particularly when we’re dealing with an emerging pathogen that we still have much to learn about. In March 2015, I wrote a book review for “Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic” which was right up my alley focus on emerging zoonotic disease. I’ll be truthful, I’m not exactly sure if there are more diseases popping up or if we are better at finding them and with society being what it is and sharing via social media we hear about them with increasing frequency.

Last week, India announced that a 23 year old college student has been confirmed to have Nipah Virus (NiV). Now there are at least 300 people under observation, but no additional cases have been identified. Nipah virus infection is an emerging zoonotic disease that has the potential to cause severe disease in both animals and humans with outbreaks having occurred in Malaysia, Singapore, Bangladesh, and eastern India. Outbreaks have been associated with close contact with pigs (intermediate host), eating fruit contaminated with saliva or poop from infected fruit bats (the natural host) and direct person-to-person contact. 

Symptoms of NiV are varied including fever, headaches, myalgia (muscle pain), vomiting and sore throat. As the infection progresses, dizziness, drowsiness, altered consciousness, and neurological signs that indicate acute encephalitis may occur and some people can also experience atypical pneumonia and severe respiratory problems, including acute respiratory distress. The incubation period is believed to range from 4 to 14 days and based on data from reported outbreaks the mortality rates are 40% to 70%.

With many countries importing fruits, there is a risk of international transmission via fruits or fruit products such as raw date palm juice that has been contaminated with urine or saliva from infected fruit bats. Luckily transmission can be prevented by washing the fruit thoroughly or peeling them before eating. If you’ve purchased fruit that looks to have bites taken out of it, the WHO recommends that it is discarded and not consumed.

Does this mean we panic? No. But it does remind us that in the world of viruses, nothing stays still and that we must continue to be vigilant and remind ourselves that with globalization, things are closer than we think and can be whisked around the world in under 15 hours (the time it takes to fly direct from Toronto to Shanghai). We’ll never know when an infected person, or contaminated food or object may be on its way to spread disease to unsuspecting populations!   

Bugging Off!

Nicole

Philly Cheese Steaks – Food for the Brain

Next week I’m off to the annual APIC conference in Philly. The 3-day conference (at least the 3 days I’m there), is touting itself as the must-attend event for unparalleled infection prevention and control learning and networking. I’m lucky, one of the perks of my job is that I get the opportunity to attend conferences and soak up as much as I can. 

To say that APIC can be overwhelming is an understatement. If you so choose, there are sessions from 6am, and evening symposiums that run until 8 or 9pm (the non-educational functions run later, if you know what I mean…). The exhibition area is huge, with booths ranging from mediocre to SPECTACULAR, hocking all sorts of infection prevention and control related items… and some not so infection prevention and control related items. The 9 hours of exhibit time over three days requires some serious strategizing to ensure you see everything you wanted to!

From an education perspective, the conference agenda is 41 pages long with topics hitting on virtually any topic related to infection prevention and control. As a lover of all things cleaning and disinfection, if you want to meet up, the following are some of the sessions I intend on hitting: 

 

    1. Hospital Mattresses as a Source of HAIs: Current Recommendations for Disinfection

    2. Interpreting the Results of Microbial Cultures and Biochemical Tests for Residual Contamination on Flexible Endoscopes 

    3. Breaches in Dental Infection Prevention-Could This Be Your Practice?  

    4. The Journey Towards Compliance with Point of Care Pre-cleaning: Developing a Standard Work Document

    5. Disentangling Disinfectants: Considerations for Selecting or Changing Disinfecting Wipes

    6. Bringing Best Practice to Point of Care: Pre-cleaning of Instruments Outside of the OR

    7. I’m Sorry, Did You Say...Prions?

    8. Biofilms: Development, Transmission, Removal, and Disinfection 

    9. Reprocessing Best Practices Can Be Operationalized in Outpatient Clinics-Here’s How!

    10. Sterilization and Disinfection Troubleshooting for the IP

For those of you attending APIC, be sure to find me. I'd love to catch up or meet you for the first time! I'll be tweeting so follow me @nicolecronkenny. If you're not attending, be sure to follow #APIC2019 to keep up with what is being said! The conference as I said promises to cover a wide variety of topics!

Bugging Off!

Nicole