Around 165,000 Australians pick up infections in hospitals every year. That’s a disgrace.
It shouldn’t be happening, but copper embedded hospital uniforms could soon make a big dent in the problem.
Hospital infections are spread mostly by touch. They hit already sick people hard, killing around 7% or keeping them in hospital nearly 6 times as long.
Clean surfaces and hands are the standard approach to stopping these bugs. Sadly that no longer seems to be enough.
Copper is already working on that. Its been proved in hospitals and in the lab that surfaces made of copper (or bronze or brass) kill most germs on contact & stop them spreading.
But a new breakthrough adding copper to textiles could take it one step further.
For the first time researchers in the UK & China have created a washable composite material from antibacterial copper nanoparticles that can be embedded in wearable materials like cotton or polyester.
The scientists behind the discovery say that fabric made with the copper nanoparticles “showed excellent antibacterial resistance against Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and E. coli, even after being washed 30 times”.
It’s fantastic news and already there is talk of commercialising the breakthrough for the uniforms of nurses, doctors and orderlies.
They can’t come soon enough given the rise of new superbugs resistant to most antibiotics.
