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During pandemic (H1N1) 2009, primary care providers were scurrying around offices and clinics removing books and toys from waiting rooms, positioning bottles of hand sanitizer, passing out surgical masks to patients who presented with a cough or fever and using hospital-grade disinfect to mop up floors when a suspected H1N1 case left their office or clinic.
They were, of course, following infection control guidelines established and recommended by the College of Family Physicians (CFPC) and a number of other groups during the height of the pandemic.
As the threat fades into memory, there?s an understandable tendency to hide the mops in the closet and leave the masks in the box.
But Ontario?s top infectious disease doctor is urging primary care providers to maintain aggressive infection prevention and control measures in their practices year-round.
Returning to a business-as-usual would be a mistake, says Dr. Doug Sider, acting director of infectious disease prevention and control for the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion. ?To recommend that we only consider more aggressive compliance with all of these infection prevention and control measures in the face of something like pandemic influenza, and then step back, relax our vigilance, relax our expectations, relax our urging to compliance at other times, just doesn?t make a lot of sense to me.?
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They were, of course, following infection control guidelines established and recommended by the College of Family Physicians (CFPC) and a number of other groups during the height of the pandemic.
As the threat fades into memory, there?s an understandable tendency to hide the mops in the closet and leave the masks in the box.
But Ontario?s top infectious disease doctor is urging primary care providers to maintain aggressive infection prevention and control measures in their practices year-round.
Returning to a business-as-usual would be a mistake, says Dr. Doug Sider, acting director of infectious disease prevention and control for the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion. ?To recommend that we only consider more aggressive compliance with all of these infection prevention and control measures in the face of something like pandemic influenza, and then step back, relax our vigilance, relax our expectations, relax our urging to compliance at other times, just doesn?t make a lot of sense to me.?
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