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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Sodium hypochlorite is extensively used as a disinfectant in the health care industry for more than 150 years. There are lots of misconceptions are there even to this day regarding the dilution and time of exposure required for its disinfection action. National guideline on Biomedical waste published by the Ministry of Government of India in its recommendations on Biomedical Waste (BMW) rule of 2016 had suggested the use of 10 % Sodium hypochlorite which was later corrected as typographical error and changed to 1 % which is now followed in the BMW Rule – 2018. The current study was planned since available literature does not mention the lowest concentration of Sodium hypochlorite and shortest possible time required for decontamination. To estimate the optimum requirement of Sodium hypochlorite to be used for disinfection of discarded blood vacutainers, we took up this study which was also a requirement of the hospital to close one of the non compliance (NC) raised by one of the NABH assessors who contested that 1 % is not sufficient to decontaminate laboratory waste, especially blood. The study was designed and executed in a period of three and a half month which not only showed that 1 % of Sodium hypochlorite was sufficient to disinfect the blood samples collected by the laboratory but also the requirement of 20 min. specified by CDC guidelines was not required and the organisms tested were killed within 10 minutes. In the study, 11 bacteriological species of medical importance have been tested for the efficacy of Sodium hypochlorite as a disinfecting agent.