It’s been three weeks since the Fraser Health Authority responded to doctors at Burnaby Hospital who said an outbreak of c difficile bacteria was responsible for 84 patient deaths.
Fraser Health Spokesman Roy Thorpe-Dorward says staff have finished a two-week, hospital-wide deep clean with sporicidal bleach.
“Cleaning focuses on patient rooms and bathrooms, twice per day, and public areas that are frequently touched, including high-touch surfaces like bed rails, call bells, counters, doorknobs.”
He says staff will do the same at four other hospitals — Langley, Royal Columbian, Peace Arch and Surrey Memorial — since those sites have higher-than-average rates of c difficile outbreaks.
He adds other measures have been put in place, such as appointing a doctor to oversee infection control onsite.
Fraser Health officials had denied the doctors’ claims, saying they’ve reduced infection rates by 40 percent since 2009.
Cleaning staff have been pulled away from other hospitals in Metro Vancouver to help with the deep-clean at Burnaby.
Thorpe-Dorward says regular cleaning at the other facilities hasn’t been hampered by the shortage.
But Mike Old, with the Hospital Employees Union, says the opposite.
“we filed a grievance with Aramark earlier this week because our members were working short at VGH and St. Paul’s because a lot of the casual staff had been pulled to go work at Burnaby Hospital.”
Old says that means any shift that needed a casual worker would have been short-handed.
Aramark is the private company Fraser Health has hired to clean Burnaby Hospital.
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