In Ger­many an­nu­al­ly ap­prox. 500.000 to 800.000 noso­co­mi­al in­fec­tions are caused by a lack of hy­giene, which lead to about 30.000 to 70.000 deaths based on fre­quent­ly ap­pear­ing an­tibi­ot­ic-re­sis­tant mi­croor­gan­isms. This caus­es an eco­nom­ic dam­age of more than 2 bil­lion €. RKI (Robert-Koch In­sti­tute) and lead­ing hy­giene ex­perts rec­om­mend a pre­ven­tion of noso­co­mi­al in­fec­tions by a se­lec­tive dis­in­fec­tion pro­ce­dure of the pa­tient-re­lat­ed area and a hy­giene-con­trolled pa­tient far area. There­fore the trans­fer of hu­man-pathogenic germs and cross-con­tam­i­na­tions must be avoid­ed. For this rea­son the clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion of sur­faces is es­sen­tial­ly im­por­tant: In­ves­ti­ga­tions of noso­co­mi­al in­fec­tions have shown, that the op­ti­mi­sa­tion of the mul­ti-bar­ri­er-sys­tem with the dis­in­fec­tion of sur­faces in­clud­ing the dis­in­fec­tion of floor­ings is one of the es­sen­tial strate­gies of pre­ven­tion. The lat­est RKI guide­line about sur­face clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion dif­fer­en­ti­ates cer­tain areas into cat­e­gories with “spe­cial in­fec­tion risk”, “pos­si­ble in­fec­tion risk” and “with­out in­fec­tion risk”. Now only lec­ture-rooms, stair­ways, etc. be­long to the cat­e­go­ry “with­out in­fec­tion risk”; gen­er­al sta­tions and out­pa­tient clin­ics are al­ready con­sid­ered to be “pos­si­bly risky”. Ac­cord­ing to RKI such areas need to be dis­in­fect­ed sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly a) if there is a rec­og­niz­able con­tam­i­na­tion, b) in the con­text of a ter­mi­nal dis­in­fec­tion, c) in out­break sit­u­a­tions as well as d) if spe­cial germs occur; even pa­tient-far sur­faces must be in­clud­ed then. It’s ob­vi­ous, that ap­pro­pri­ate clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion of sur­faces re­duce noso­co­mi­al in­fec­tions. The clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion of floor­ings is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant, be­cause they build the largest part of all sur­faces (and their con­tam­i­na­tion po­ten­tial re­gard­ing germs is much high­er than the con­tam­i­na­tion po­ten­tial of other sur­faces). Due to the per­ma­nent use a rapid re-con­tam­i­na­tion with germs after each clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tion cycle oc­curs. This re-con­tam­i­na­tion is caused by the fact, that the cur­rent clean­ing and dis­in­fec­tions pro­cess­es are not sus­tain­able, be­cause the bio­cides don’t re­main on the sur­face and are no longer ef­fec­tive after each dis­in­fec­tion cycle. Dur­ing the pro­ject a tem­po­rary coat­ing for floor­ings with pho­to­cat­alyt­i­cal­ly ac­tive metal ox­ides was de­vel­oped, which re­duces 1-2 or­ders of mag­ni­tude of mi­croor­gan­isms with­in 24 hours.

The IGF-pro­ject 15110 N of the re­search as­so­ci­a­tion Eu­ro­pean Clean­ing and Hy­giene Tech­nol­o­gy Re­search As­so­ci­a­tion, Cam­pus Ficht­en­hain 11, D-47807 Krefeld, was sup­port­ed via the AiF with­in the fund­ing pro­gramme „In­dus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung und –en­twick­lung (IGF)“ by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Tech­nol­o­gy (BMWi) due to a de­ci­sion of the Ger­man Par­lia­ment.

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.