Centre Issues Black Fungus Advisory to States, Union Territories | Details Here

This comes in the backdrop of PM Modi highlighting the threat of mucormycosis or black fungus.

New Delhi: The Union Health Ministry on Friday wrote to all states and Union Territories and has urged them to ensure all COVID-19 hospitals and other health care facilities adhere to infections prevention. The Centre in its letter said that the states must remain prepared to tackle “secondary and opportunistic fungal infections which are getting amplified due to the present surge in Covid cases”.

This comes in the backdrop of PM Modi highlighting the threat of mucormycosis or black fungus.

In its advisory, the Centre said that in due course, the states and UTs are expected to establish surveillance with a focus on ventilator-associated pneumonia, catheter-associated blood stream infection, catheter-associated urinary tract infection, surgical site infections, gastro-intestinal outbreaks.

Here is the list of guidelines for states and UTs:

• The centre has asked states to establish/activate the Hospital Infection Control Committee with the head of the institution or an administrator as the chairperson.
• Infection prevention and control nodal officer to be designated- preferably a microbiologist or senior infection control nurse.
• Prepare and implement the Infection Prevention Control (IPC) Programme in the hospital/health facilities, as per the guidance given in National Guidelines for Infection and Control in Healthcare Facilities.
• Strengthen procedures and practices for IPC.
• Transmission-based precautions need heightened focus on the droplet, airborne and contact precautions from the perspective of protecting healthcare workers and ensuring patient safety.
• Improve the environment and facilitate ventilation with a focus on fresh air and natural ventilation. Cleaning, disinfection and sanitation of hospital environment and frequently touched surfaces.
• Safe water and food to prevent water or food-borne diseases in hospital settings ad biomedical waste needs to be managed as per the CPCB guidelines.
• Infection Prevention and Control practices need to be enhanced in ICUs using a bundle approach to prevent device-associated infections.
• Infection Prevention and Control practices in the clinical laboratories and those attached to hospitals are very crucial for the safety of laboratory/hospital staff and health security of the community.
• Train all hospital staff to develop their skills in IPC, irrespective of their individual routine duties, in implementing procedures and protocols described in the Hospital Infection Control manual.
• A state nodal officer needs to be identified to monitor the implementation of infection prevention and control to provide evaluation and feedback of the IPC programme in the state.