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The Risk Status of Waiting Areas for Airborne Infection Control in Delhi Hospitals
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

The Risk Status of Waiting Areas for Airborne Infection Control in Delhi Hospitals

Raja Singh
Curēus (Palo Alto, CA), v 14(3), 23211
16 Mar 2022
PMID: 35444905
url
https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.23211View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

General & Internal Medicine Life Sciences & Biomedicine Medicine, General & Internal Science & Technology
Background Hospital waiting areas are overlooked from the airborne infection control viewpoint as they are not classified as critical for infection control. This is the area where undiagnosed and potentially infected patients gather with susceptible and vulnerable patients, and there is no mechanism to segregate the two, especially when the potentially infected visitors/patients themselves are unaware of the infection or may be asymptomatic. It is important to know whether hospitals in Delhi, a populated, low-resource setting having community transmission/occurrence of airborne diseases such as tuberculosis, consider waiting areas as critical. Hence, this study aims to determine whether hospitals in Delhi consider waiting areas as critical areas from the airborne infection control viewpoint. Methodology The Right to Information Act, 2005, was used to request information from 11 hospitals included in this study. Results After compiling the results, it was found that five out of the 11 hospitals did not consider waiting areas as critical from the infection spread point of view. Two of the 11 hospitals acknowledged the criticality of waiting areas but did not include the same in the list of critical areas. Only three out of the 11 considered waiting areas as critical and included these in the list of critical areas in a hospital. Conclusions This study provided evidence that most hospitals in Delhi do not include waiting areas in the list of critical areas in a hospital.

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#7 Affordable and Clean Energy
#13 Climate Action
#11 Sustainable Cities and Communities

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Web of Science research areas
Medicine, General & Internal
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