MADINAH — A total of 35 violations committed by the Chest Hospital in Madinah were recorded by the General Department for Infection Prevention during its inspection campaigns, Al-Madinah Arabic daily reported. The report was written according to the criteria set by the Ministry of Health's regulations and it revealed several violations in various parts of the hospital's services and building. The building's floors and wall paint were of poor quality and weak durability. The floors were leaking and the paint was not soft nor anti-bacterial and quick to deteriorate. The buildings also had an insufficient number of hand sanitizers and sinks for medical staff to wash their hands. According to the ministry's regulations, all patients' room must have an extra sink for medical staff to wash their hands. Plenty of hand sanitizers should also be available. Sanitization was generally found to be inadequate. Patients' rooms did not have separate changing rooms for clean laundry and clothes and others for dirty clothes and laundry. The containers of medical tools and syringes were not sterilized and the hospital was operating in poor environmental health conditions and lacked enough cleaning supplies in every floor and room. The Infection Prevention Department did not have a specialist in it and the department does not have a comprehensive manual on how to prevent infections. The department did not have clear policies on how to deal with diseases such as tuberculosis in any of its stages. Moreover, the staff in the department was not trained to handle cases of potentially fatal diseases nor are they trained in infection prevention. The female emergency ward's beds were aligned closely next to each other with no comfortable space for the patient. There was no isolation room with negative room pressure and the windows were always open in the ward. The hospital's external clinic was deemed to be in an unsuitable location because it was near the emergency ward where paramedics and clinicians cross paths on a daily basis and could infect each other. The emergency ward did not have a separate waiting room for respiratory infections and diseases. Patients with such diseases are put in waiting rooms with other patients and could infect them. The emergency vehicles were extremely dirty and unsterilized. When a patient dies they would dispose the body in a regular bedspread when the regulations state that the body must be enclosed in an isolation bag to reduce the risk of infection. In the tuberculosis patients' wards there were shared rooms, which is strictly against the ministry's regulations. The hospital did not have an intensive care unit. In the cases that need intensive care, the patients would be transferred to another hospital. There was negligence and insufficiency in the medical equipment available. There were not any medical ventilators nor trained staff to resuscitate a patient whenever needed. Several medical equipment were outdated and dusty, and some had insects on them. The equipment storage rooms were not sterilized and filled with cartons and old furniture.
